This actually isn’t meant to be a predominantly personal blog. Nothing less than the entire history of Columbus Ohio will be attempted in these pages. Still, personal anecdotes provide the perfect entry point for attacking this stuff, so here goes.
There are a ton of fondly recalled and very specific memories stemming from here. This is the residence which immediately followed 1990 1/2 Summit Street and while losing one roommate as a tradeoff – theoretically gaining a little suburban respectability in the process – Alan and I have plenty of adventures with the same old cast of characters. Also the space I will eventually share with Jill, my first live-in girlfriend of this city.
The first night we are fully moved in, Alan and I and a friend of his nicknamed Snoop stumble upon a trio of attractive females skinny dipping in the pool. Somehow, Snoop knows one of the girls and somehow, incredibly enough, nobody else shows up outside the six of us, at least not that I can recall. One of these girls even winds up coming back to our apartment to change back into her clothes. We think we have our meal ticket punched with this episode, but, sadly enough, none of us ever see these chicks again and nothing this sensational happens at the pool for the remainder of our residence here.
Still, colorful episodes abound, even as we are quote unquote growing up a little bit by moving away from campus. One of these involves a night where my microwave stops working, and somehow we get it into our heads that we will super glue it to the front door of our neighbor across the way, Nicole. As the only two apartments up here on this wing of the second floor, it kind of feels like we are hurtling through space and time together, Nicole and us. I mean, we are friendly enough up to this point and she hangs out at our place quite a bit. But yeah, she will wind up calling the cops this particular night and we never speak to her again.
But yeah, domesticity eventually creeps in, et cetera et cetera. Actually this microwave incident went down after Jill and I broke up, and she moved out. It was in many respects one last hurrah before downgrading for a move alone elsewhere. I don’t think of this Upper Arlington experience as my best era, nor most fondly recalled, but it is kind of a peculiar outlier, never revisited. Whatever might be said about owning a home, or living in hipper neighborhoods, and so on, there is something distinct about your first time just renting a nice apartment in a somewhat upscale district of a big city like this. The symbolism of trashing my appliances and setting them on fire just before moving out is hard to miss. Still, this is something I never bothered replicating, this experience, and as such warm memories do survive. The picture below basically tells you all you need to know:
