“Do you miss it?”  Allison, a friend of mine who visited over the weekend, asks.

“Miss what?”

“College,”  She says simply, slumping into my couch.

“Sometimes,”  I say, “I think it’s easier to live knowing I don’t have to make minimum payments on my credit cards anymore, or not pay them at all.”

She nods.  We’ve already exhausted most of the regular topics: sex positions, cars and sports.  What, didn’t you know that is what all women talk about to their friends? I’ve probably just fulfilled about every guys’ fantasy who reads my blog…Anywho…

Allison gets up and goes into my spare bedroom, where the blow-up mattress and her overnight bag is.

“MAN you read alot,”  She yells from the room.

“I’ve got a lot more books upstairs,”  I say, shrugging to no one.  I look over to the pile of books on the table; whoops, missed some cleaning before she came over.  Allison comes out holding a hardback spiral-bound book about the history of the piano.

“You bought a book about the history of the piano…?”  She trails off, thumbing through the large book meant for a piano music stand.

“Well, my thinking was, how could I play something if I don’t understand it’s meaning?  Where it came from? Why was it invented?”  I ask, smiling.  I enjoy knowing the background of what, why, and how of EVERYTHING.  I guess it’s why computers are so interesting; I grew up when the background of computers was forming.

“Normally people don’t think like that, you know, no one needs to know the background to understand how it just is,”  Allison says, closing the book with a snap. She looks at me.  “How many books do you read a week?”

“Depends,”  I say, shrugging, “I read that one at the bookstore, and I figured it would’ve been mean of me to leave it there after I had read the whole thing..”

“Wait, you read this.  In. The. Bookstore.”  Allison says.  It wasn’t a question.

“It was a very interesting read!”  I say indignantly, grabbing for book playfully.  She holds it tauntingly in front of me, out of my reach, because I’m sitting on the couch.

“You’ve changed,”  Allison says suddenly, sitting down and handing me the book.  I look at her, not sure whether to be offended or pleased.

“I hope, for the better?”

“Yes, I think so.”  Allison says, nodding.  A few minutes pass before we go into another conversation -

“Remember when you used to come over and we’d play all sorts of games outside?” She starts, before adding, “Don’t you miss being a kid again?  Not having to worry about bills, work and more bills?”

“It was fun, but I don’t miss it, not anymore…”  I say.  I look over at Allison and she doesn’t say anything, so I launch into my explanation, “I had a dream when I first moved up here, I dreamt that I was saying Good-Bye to a little girl with pigtails.  She was crying and saying that she didn’t want me to go, she wanted me to stay and play more games with her.  I felt like I had babysat her all my life, and I didn’t want to go either.  She kept on hugging me, and we were both crying at one point.  But…eventually I had to pry her off and leave.”

I stop, looking over at Allison.  She doesn’t saying anything.

“I don’t think I need a dream interpreter to tell me what that meant,”  I say simply, shrugging.

“Yeah this is UPS, I just wanted to let you know that I dropped the package off by the front door,”  A guy says monotonously over the phone.  He doesn’t even take a breath - I’m impressed.

“Thanks, how did you get into the building?”  I ask, holding my cellphone while simultaneously getting my mail.  There is only one way to get into the building, and that is to have someone ‘buzz’ you in.  Usually the business managers do that for people delivering packages.

“I just rang the Darrell,”  The UPS guy says, clearly having delivered there before.  Darrell is one of the business managers.  Not a landlord, but someone the landlord pays to do all of the dirty work of the apartment complex: give tours, do screenings of new apartment tenants, field all the calls about maintenance, and be the general communication (read: buffer zone) between the landlord and the tenants.

“But, he didn’t come to the door, right?  Darrell doesn’t know what’s in the package?”  I ask.  Okay, so I have to admit, I didn’t exactly ASK if I could have a piano in an apartment complex.  No idea what I’m talking about?  Click here for the piano entry.  Well, to be quite honest I didn’t ask Darrell if I could have a piano for a reason. I don’t really want to find out what the answer is if I do ask.  I’ll just do first, ask questions later.

“No, I mean…” The guy trails off, I can practically hear him thinking, “I just told him it was heavy…”

“Okay that’s alright, thanks for the delivery!”  I say.   We hang up shortly afterward.

After retrieving my mail, I use my key to get back through the front door, and I look down the hallway.  The Main Offices’ light is on, the door is propped open, but no one is in there.  I walk quietly up the stairs, turn the corner and…

“OH GOD,”  I yelp, backing into the wall and dropping all of my mail.  Darrell is RIGHT around the corner, standing in front of my door.  He’s a pretty big guy, but no one could hide THAT size of box towering in the hallway.  It must be about 6 feet tall!

“Hey…Darrell,”  I say, bending over to pick up my mail.

“Oh, just the person I was looking for!”  He says happily.  Darrell is an elderly guy, who runs the apartment complex with his wife.

“Yeah, me too,”  I say, smiling like I had been waiting for him, not the other way around.

“Wait…you were?”  He asks, his smile faltering.

“Erm…I was just kidding Darrell,”  I say sheepishly, unable to think of something witty to say.  He turns around to look at the box.

“Oh, that’s um…an entertainment center,”  I finish lamely.  “I need a new one.”

“Oh okay, they must have used the wrong box then,”  He says, turning back around to look at me with his clear blue eyes, smiling.

“Why’s that?”

“Well, it says ‘Wellington Digital Piano’ on the side here,”  He says, pointing to BIG BOLD LETTERS saying ‘Wellington Digital Piano”. I watch as he turns around to face me, his clear blue eyes make me feel like he can see to my soul.

“Ahhhhh yeah about that,”  I start, smiling.

“Well, what the landlord doesn’t know won’t hurt him,”  Darrell says, walking away.  He turns around and adds, “And don’t forget to put that ‘entertainment center’ together quietly.”

“Thank you,”  I sputter. My mouth was hanging open at his point so I close it.  I spin around look at the box towering in the hallway.  There is NO WAY I will be able to life 130 pounds by myself.  I look down the hallway.  Of course, no one is around, and the complex is silent.

It took me about 3 hours, but I finally got it together:

Oh yeah, do I need to mention that about 120 pounds of that is in the KEYBOARD itself?! Good LORD it is heavy.  Try attaching legs to the stupid thing while on it’s side, and then having to LIFT the whole damn thing up by yourself and set it on two unsteady feet. After that, you go underneath tightening the rest of the bolts.  At one time I put my Ottoman underneath it just to dampen the blow to the keyboard if it falls, so that it doesn’t crush me.

Luckily for me, it never did.  And, now I have a digital piano, complete with play-along songs like “Hot Cross Buns” and “When the Saints Go Marching In”.  Next stop, Amazon for a better piano book!