Outside Looking In

I was sitting on my patio in my apartment complex after a long day and noticed a cute old couple carrying in their groceries across the parking lot. This made me wonder what a cute old couple is doing living in an apartment complex. Then I thought to myself, "I hope they don't live on the third floor. I have enough trouble struggling up the never ending flights of stairs just to get to my front door, and I am only 25!"

When I am a cute old person carrying in my groceries, I imagine myself in a nice little one-story home with a white picket fence and a vegetable garden in the back yard that includes green beans, tomatoes, and turnips. Okay so maybe I have thought about this a little too much, but I know that I would not want to live in an apartment complex with neighbors that never sleep and dogs that bark all through the night so that you can never sleep. Not to mention the trek down to the mailbox just to find a never ending pile of coupons for products you have never heard of and will never buy in addition to the previously stated struggle up the stairs. I do love my apartment complex, but I look at it as a start to my professional life, not the end.

I live in an apartment because it is practical and because I cannot afford a house right now. I also live in an apartment because I do not know where I am going to end up in the next year and putting a down payment on a house I may never live in would be senseless. But then I realized that maybe living in an apartment complex is practical for that cute old couple and maybe they cannot afford a nice little one-story home with a white picket fence and a vegetable garden. Or maybe they just want to live here.

Either way, I am just an outsider looking in on their life, well I am just their neighbor sitting on my patio. But just because my idea of growing old is a very specific, it is just my idea and does not mean what is right for me is right for everyone else. Now if only I can remember that for other aspects of my life.