I miss all the fun...

As I was getting my mail yesterday, one of my neighbors, Tim, asked me if I'd heard all the ruckus in the building in the middle of the night.
Uhh...no, actually, I hadn't.
Evidently, another neighbor made a new friend in a bar on Sunday night, brought him home, and around 3 a.m., he either took a wrong turn on his way to the bathroom or ended up sleepwalking into the hallway of our four-story building. Wearing nothing but his underwear.
He was knocking on doors and being loud... so much so, that someone called the police. He couldn't remember his new friend's last name, or apartment number, so it took awhile to figure out where he'd come from. Eventually, she woke up and the guy didn't end up going to the police station in his undies.

I'm just shocked, because I can't believe I slept through all of that. I am a really light sleeper.
Well, except for the time I slept through the fire in my building. During which firefighters broke into my apartment. Did I mention that I slept through that?

Yeah. I woke up one Friday morning a few years ago, groggy as ever, and noticed, while I was in the bathroom, that there was an awful lot of street noise emanating from my living room, as though a window was open.
Odd. I didn't remember opening a window. Sometimes, when it's windy, one window opens all by itself. But it wasn't windy. So I stumble bleary-eyed into my living room to find that a window, was, in fact, open. As I move to close it, I notice that the window shade is all messed up. Odd.
Then I turned around and saw the big hole in the back door of my apartment, which leads from my kitchen to a trash chute and eventually, the street. My heart jumped into my throat.
Oh my God... SOMEONE'S BROKEN IN! SHIT! HAVE I BEEN ROBBED? WHAT DO I DO?!?!

I ran over to grab my phone, though I really wasn't sure who I thought I was going to call... and then I noticed that my microwave was on the dining room floor. And the table it sits on was also in the dining room, along with several other things. Umm... would thieves have been so careful about placing items from my kitchen in my dining room? (You have to remember that it's 4:30 in the morning... and I don't ever think rationally at that hour. Some might argue that I never think rationally, but that's another story...).
As I moved closer to my kitchen, I finally caught the unmistakable aroma of burnt wood. Oh. There was a fire. But where? When? What the fuck happened? Am I dreaming this? How is this possible?

It's utterly silent in my building. No one else is up. No one is in the hallway. I take a quick look out my windows, and I see no evidence that anything out of the ordinary has occurred. I am completely baffled. I have no idea what to do.

Later, in talking to my property managers and neighbors, I finally pieced together what had happened. A tenant who was moving out had been instructed by the garbage company to pile up their extra trash next to the building, and someone had thrown a cigarette or a match into it around 1 a.m. The fire scorched the exterior of the building in a spot that's right next to my kitchen. The firefighters needed to get into my apartment to determine whether the flames had gotten inside the walls.

Here's the thing: I really AM a light sleeper. How did I sleep through the sirens, the building's fire alarm, my neighbors pounding on my door, AND firefighters breaking through my back door and trudging through my apartment, opening windows and moving furniture along the way?? My neighbors had come to the conclusion that I wasn't home... because who the hell could sleep through all of that?? The fire hydrant on our block IS PRACTICALLY OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW, fer cryin' out loud. I am awakened by sirens and car doors slamming ALL the time. But when there might be actual danger present, I am comatose. Great.

For a long time after that, I was known to everyone in my building as "the one who slept through the fire."
Yep. That's me.
At least I didn't bring home a dude who ended up nearly naked in the hallway....