In the past five years, I've had the privilege of experiencing many neighbors. And when I say many, I mean that as in I've lived in places where I had many neighbors and I've had many neighbors over the years. That seems confusing. Let me explain.

When I was a college freshman, I lived in a community dorm in what amounted to being one step above the ghetto. Now I've heard some horror stories about community-style dorm life, but I honestly didn't have a bad experience - apart from the mold, old furniture, and not being able to control our own thermostats. Gardner is where I met my three best friends, and I know I wouldn't know as many people as I do or have gotten involved in the things I did if not for that little closet-like living space.

So I spent a year living on the third floor of Gardner Hall. Stephanie and I got lucky. We didn't technically have neighbors. Our room was conveniently located between the stairwell and the bathroom. Living on the top floor was great though, once you actually got all of your stuff lugged up three flights of stairs (no elevator). We had some pretty unique neighbors, most of which I still consider friends.

Directly across the hall from us were two sorority girls. Their room literally glowed pink. One was a cheerleader, but it was the other one who would run up one set of stairs and down the other every night. Thinking about that still makes me feel like a lazy, out-of-shape bum.

Our neighbor across the hall one room to the right is still a close friend. My first memory of her involves my roommate screaming bloody murder because a roach (she's deathly afraid of all bugs) crawled across the floor. Her screaming attracted Haley's attention so she came to see what was going on. She ended up killing the roach for Steph, and she was a part of my college life from then on out.

My two other best friends lived on the second floor. I met Alisha through a class and Julianne through Alisha's former roommate, Morgan (who was in our little group for two years). We weren't very well-behaved our freshman year, but magically we always managed to go to class and keep our grades up.

We did something every night of the week.

Friday - Party (usually)

Sunday - Recovery

We played twister in the third-floor washroom on regular occasions (got kicked out one night so we went and played on the quad), got in trouble for climbing the trees on the tailgating quad, and through it all forged an unbreakable bond of friendship.

My sophomore year, Stephanie and I lived in a suite-style dorm on the first floor of Cowarts Hall. This is where I learned that living on the bottom floor is a bad idea. That year we lived under elephants and shared a bathroom with pigs. At the risk of being way TMI, I'm going to share a really horrible neighbor experience from that year. Read at your own risk.

Stephanie and I had been out somewhere. When we got back to the room, we both had to go to the bathroom. Steph went first, and to this day I don't know how she did. When I walked into the bathroom and opened the door to the toilet the smell almost knocked me down. Apparently, one of our suitemates was either really sick or had partied a little too hard. Either way, they destroyed the bathroom. I'm talking projectile vomit, and bless her heart she tried to clean it up. But she used paper towels and threw them in the trash can and left them there. With the door closed. Now, the toilet room didn't have any ventilation so it was hot year-round. If you can imagine the smell I encountered, multiply it by 20. We threw the entire trash can away because we couldn't get close enough to the thing to empty it. We put it in a giant black trashbag, gagging the entire time, and then Stephanie (who is in possession of a Cuban's temper) threw the entire thing at their connecting door. I'm pretty sure they were in there.

My third and fourth year, Stephanie and I lived in an apartment-style dormitory on the edge of campus. We loved it for the most part - apartment living with the convenience of not having to fight for campus parking.

The first year we lived with the freshman girls' track team, and it wouldn't have been bad had they not been the epitome of the stereotypical freshman. Halloween of that year, Stephanie bought some decorations for our door. Well, our neighbors decided to steal them... while we were home (stupid freshmen). We heard them and opened the door. They ran. Now, Stephanie and I are at the point in our college careers where we don't play, so we followed them and banged on the door. I guess we scared them because they opened the door a fraction of an inch and shoved a bag with our decorations out.

We dealt with a herd of horses running up and down the hall and stairs (even though we had an elevator) and drunken debauchery in the courtyard directly below us. Once we even had a small band of hippies gather with their guitars.

The summer of 2009 I moved in with my best friend, Julianne. We lived in a townhouse-style apartment right next to campus. We had some interesting neighbors. We shared a stoop with this guy who thought he was sexy or something. He would always open his door and be all like, "Hey" in a Ron Jeremy voice, every time we opened the door. Then there was the apartment on the corner where every weekend a group of guys gathered and just stood on the front stoop with their coolers and yelled at people who walked by. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? On the other side of us we had the drug dealing Hawaiian. He would stand on their balcony and whistle at us whenever we walked outside. Eventually they got raided by the S.W.A.T. team. Unfortunately, I had already moved back home.

Which is where I am now. Living with my parents. We have a corner lot so we're actually pretty lucky. Except for our vampire neighbors and our wannabe rockstar neighbor-across-the-street.

Our neighbor across the street plays drums. All the time. Very loudly. I sleep during the day. I usually have earplugs so daytime noises don't bother me. Well, whenever he gets a hankerin' to beat down, I can hear his music and understand the lyrics to the songs he's playing along with through my earplugs.

And then there's our adjacent neighbors who my dad swears are vampires. They don't do anything domestic during normal hours. They roll the trash out at midnight. Slam car doors at 3 a.m. Set off the car alarm before the sun rises in the morning. Not to mention the fact that one of the kids is a heathen. Seriously. I was taking a shower the other day when all of a sudden I hear this loud BANG!! My mom hears it from the front of the house and thinks I've killed myself. So she comes running back to the bathroom to ask if I'm okay. Then we hear it again, so she raises the blinds on the bathroom window to see the neighbors' little boy quickly trying to crawl out from under the fence surrounding our air conditioning unit... which he's been jumping on. And he randomly stands in the driveway screaming. For no reason.

Neighbors. Can't get away from them.