APPLE PIE
APPLE PIE
The woman who lives next door to me is about ninety years old. Her kitchen window is in line with my bedroom window (around twenty feet apart). I just moved into my apartment at the beginning of the summer. I found out what ninety year old women do to keep busy IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. Since I moved in, I’ve become one of the woman’s main concerns; she always wants to make sure I don’t leave the house in the morning on an empty stomach. This past summer it was hot at night, and I didn’t have an air conditioner, so I always had my windows open. The woman next door kept a fan in her window blowing outward toward my bedroom window. Every night she would be in her kitchen baking apple pie, and the aroma would fill up in my bedroom. She would start cooking at around midnight and bake till sunrise, which is when I get up for work. Due to the smell, I had dreams in the middle of the night that I would be apple picking or bobbing for apples. By morning, my entire apartment would smell of apples due to her all night obsession with cooking. She would wait by her front door for me to go to my car and leave for work; as soon as I opened the door, she’d holler out, “How about a piece of fresh baked pie?” I would always say no thank you, but that was never good enough. She would say, “Oh, you should never go off on an empty stomach; breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” If I were to stand around and discuss this matter (like I did the first few times), I would be late for work. I would take the napkin and the plastic fork and say thank you; when I got to the end of the block, I would toss it out of the window. After smelling apple pie all night, I couldn’t stand having it in my car; it made me nauseous. I would get to work and everyone at work was convinced that I was wearing apple cologne (that I was a real fruitcake or something). One Saturday afternoon, I was walking my dog and at the end of my block were over two hundred plastic forks and a bunch of filthy napkins with ants all over them. I realized that because of this woman, I was the town’s biggest litterbug. I had to learn to say no. “Just say no”, then it hit me. The easiest way out of this apple pie morning tragedy would be for me to walk out of my house in the morning with a buttered roll in my hand; then she couldn’t make me take the pie (the perfect excuse). I did it and it worked, but now this poor woman is going door to door throughout the neighborhood trying to put her pie to good use. I found out from her granddaughter that she is addicted to baking apple pies. She always wanted to make Grandma’s Apple Pies. The whole neighborhood is protesting against her and her pies. The neighborhood had a petition going around and wants to press harassment charges. I thought that this was a little extreme, that maybe someone could just talk to her. I later learned that I moved into an apartment in an elderly neighborhood and that everyone in the neighborhood bakes their own apple pies. (It’s a case of jealousy). I got involved and shouldn’t have because now in the morning when I go out to work, I’m approached by over thirty old ladies yelling out, “do you want apple pie?” “How about cookies?” “How about fresh banana bread?” I’m the guinea pig for the neighborhood of gray hair late night bakers. To get from my front door to my car, I have to push my way through hands holding slices of pie, cookies, and bread while holding up my buttered roll saying, “NO THANK YOU!”
