Combo Party Disco Dancing!

Living in an apartment building is an opportunity to study people without actually having to go through the arduous process of meeting and conversing with them. Since you share with them many a common area (hallways, parking areas, mailrooms), you try to ascertain what type of people they are without seeing the inside of their abodes, asking them about their families, and what they do for living. Much can be construed from apartment building habits, a brief sampling of which follows:

Diagonally parked in a parking spot? This neighbor is always late for something.
No welcome mat outside the door? This neighbor uses his apartment as a place to hang between lengthy business trips.
Solicitation flyers jammed between the doorknob and frame? You live next to a vacant apartment.
Large chunk of plaster missing over the apartment’s doorway? Your neighbor is Shaquille O’Neal.

See? A lot can be gleaned from not only careful inspection, but also analysis. I just wish such a method would have worked for what I witnessed in the complex’s corridors. Instead, we’re left with a collective “Huh?”

Enter the Combos.

For those unfamiliar with the term, Combos are that oft-overlooked convenience store snack that wrap a cylindrical tube of hardened dough (or pretzel) around a tasty filling, most often in the cheese family. In addition, they’re delicious. Probably not in any sort of magical context, but nonetheless, easily make the grade as a road trip snackable.

However, in a car or on a picnic/tailgate are the only instances in which I have seen Combos consumed. I don’t quite know what makes them so good away from home – maybe it’s the fact that there has never been a bag of Combos that have been 100 eaten; surely 1 of the 47 individual pieces gets dropped on the floor, and no one likes to vacuum up smashed Combo. I don’t even know if they’re sold at the supermarket.

And yet…

And yet upon getting in the elevator yesterday morning to head down to my car, one thing became clear. Not only had a Combo-lover decided to bring this snack home with him/her, something happened that prevented such a final destination. For as I stood there in my descending elevator, I could survey my surroundings. Strewn all over the floor, yep.

19 Combos.

Who drops 19 Combos? I can understand 1 or 2 that got away, but 19? I counted them twice (we have a slow-moving elevator), and 17 of them remain in-tact with two crushed by the back corner. So it is clear that one of two things happened in this elevator last night:

1) Someone threw a Combo Party. In reality, there were upwards of 500 Combos in the elevator at one point, making these remaining 19 far less important. After all, someone just ate an elevator full of Combos.

2) Someone threw a Combo Fight. Maybe a lovers’ quarrel, or else a couple of belligerently drunk roomies. Once the words failed these two rivals, the snack food started to fly. That, and whipping each other with Twizzlers was leaving marks.

I have weird neighbors.