So late one night back in February of 2013 I was awakened by the horrible sound that is my work ring tone. (It is the background noise for every bad dream I have. No joke.) It is the fire marshal.
Now it had been a long delightful little stretch of hardly any idiocy. We are talking maybe a whole month. I let down my guard. The hubs and I got a sitter and cab and went out for a little fun with friends. I had a few drinks. Got home about midnight, crawled in bed and drifted off into what I was hoping would be amazing sleep. I was supposed to get my hair done the next day at 9. What a great weekend. Date night with my man, a few drinks, getting my hair re fancified. Can't really hope for more. As always, hopes were shattered but the shrill bitch that is my phone.
I had been asleep for about and hour and half at this point so I was in pretty deep sleep. Top that with a couple cocktails and I was down right groggy. It was one of my tenants. We shall just call him tenant A. I actually liked this tenant so I can't bring myself to call him a name. He kept things kind of fun when he lived here. This is how the conversation went:
2:00 a.m.
Me: (in the most mumbled half asleep, tipsy tone ever) Hello
Tenant A: Don't freak out. (ok this is the worst possible thing to say to someone at 2 in the morning and I woke up pretty quickly)
Me: What now??????
Tenant A: (chuckles) Well we have a couple friends over and we think we might have broken something.
Me: Is it not something that can wait until morning? What did you do?!?!?!
Tenant A: Well a friend tried to swing from something and it broke. There was a little water but we cleaned it up. But they said we had to call and tell you about it. But, again, we cleaned it all up.
Me: Who is 'they' and what broke??
Tenant A: It is a fireman. But we cleaned it up.
Me: Why are there fireman there if you just broke something and what did you break that there is water everywhere?
Tenant A: We are in the garage so it isn't even inside the loft, so don't worry.
Me: Tell me what is happening right now.
Tenant A: It was just a small pipe, the firemen are still here, they say it is fine.
Me: Hand the phone to the nearest fireman. Now.
Tenant A: But . .
Me: NOW
Fireman: This is Fire Marshal Bill (hopefully some of you are old enough to understand why I laughed so hard I had to mute the phone)
Me: (struggling not to laugh) Can you please tell me what in the world is going on?
Fire Marshal Bill: It would appear the tenants were hosting a get together and one of them tried to stand on top of a large tv stand (would turn out later he actually stood on top of just the TV), and then jump off so that he could swing from a pipe in the rafter. The pipe was connected to a pressurized antifreeze fire sprinkler system and broke rather quickly flooding the garage. We got the call as soon as the pressure dropped and thought there was a fire. We responded with two trucks and an ambulance to find them frantically cleaning. (Later he told me that one of the was actually begging them not to call me.) I think you need to come down here and look at the damage now.
Me: Right now?
Fire Marshal Bill (literally can not type that with out laughing): Yes Mam. Now.
Me: Ok, I will down shortly.
I get up and get dressed. Sort of. I am still pretty out of it from being woken up so abruptly. I throw on the hubs sweats and his favorite old college sweatshirt and some warm shoes. It was about 40 degrees and raining out so it was a super lovely night to have head out sleepy at by now almost 2:30 in the morning. I drive down to their apartment. Thankfully they only lived about 10 minutes away.
I arrive and the official still there is Fire Marshal Bill. (hahaha) I realize, now that I am more awake after driving down there, that I look like a drunk sorority girl. Husbands sweats. Messy bed head. Faint smell of booze coming off me. Great. This is the first time I ever had to deal with the fire marshal and I look so unprofessional I could just shoot myself.
I have a very nice and polite chat with him and tells me everything he saw when he got there. The boys start to come over to talk with us and in my meanest mom voice I said no and put my hand up to stop them.
Me: No! You guys can just stand there and wait for me. No talking. No moving. Just wait. (shockingly they did it)
I finish up with the fire marshal and by the time I get over to the boys it is a little after 3:00 a.m. I had them lined up and literally just stood there and stared at them. Any time they tried to talk to me I just said no. Not yet. I made them stand there for about 5 minutes while I went from looking around the garage back to giving them my mom face back to looking at the damage then back to glaring and shaking my head, and so on and so forth. I was really doing them a favor because I could hear the people moving from their apartment to the one upstairs. I was trying to give them a little time to at lease hide the party. I am not all mean you know!
Finally. I decided to let them tell me their version. It was pretty honest and pretty funny. A drunk friend tried to climb on top of a rear projection TV and was acting like a monkey. He then jumped off the TV to try to reach the very high ceilings in the garage. Caught the pipe. It immediately broke and the kid fell down. I admit I laughed a little while they were telling me the story. These were not bad guys. Just 20 year old idiots being idiots. I checked out their whole apartment. No damage inside. It was all contained in the garage and they had cleaned up very quickly when it flooded. They ended up with a $1500 repair bill which they paid with no arguments.
Two of them later admitted that I scare the shit out of them so apparently the mom face works. Good to know.
I was pissed that I had to get up and lose sleep. I ended up canceling my hair appointment so that I could get some sleep since by the time I crawled back in bed it was nearly 4:00 a.m. Had to reschedule for later that month. That was a bummer. But these boys cleaned up their mess, paid their bill, and to be honest they kept me laughing the entire time they lived there. They did a lot of dumb stuff. But never anything worse than this. And this is the difference between good kids making a couple mistakes, and entitled assholes being destructive. It was all like this it might not be so bad.
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