Soundtrack to Mary

I’m a renter, not an owner, baby, so why don’t you kill me?
I realize that this may be the final stumbling block delaying my actual adulthood. I certainly know scads of people my age and younger who’ve taken the plunge. As Bob Smith would say, “Why can’t I be you?”
Is it the dough? Nah. I’m not exactly livin’ large, but I’d say I’m still a few years away from living under a bridge drinking Scope, so that’s not it. I’ve got my reasons, admittedly all stupid. Here’s the sad truth: I don’t want to give up all future “renting stories.” Really, I need the material.
There have been plenty of social situations in which I’ve held friends and strangers captive with tales of previous dumps and their inept landlords. One genius that comes to mind was the PETA-hating caretaker who regularly made change from, stored writing implements in, and fished cigarette lighters out of her ample bra—the same Dr. Dolittle I saw on more than one summer night trap an unsuspecting bat in the window and annihilate it with Final Net hairspray. I still don’t know whether that was part of her job description or just recreational.
I loved the spinsters who would clutch their purses and practically walk into walls to avoid eye contact with me. How about the woman who lived above me who one month rented a karaoke machine that apparently featured only one song selection, namely Bette Midler’s can’t-hear-it-enough-times classic “The Rose.” And most memorable was the all-night hallwalker who once knocked on my door asking if she could “borrow a fake fingernail.” Let me rummage through my Lee Press-On Nail junk drawer and I’ll get back to you, wing nut.
If I see a centipede the size of a Humvee in the laundry room, I need to know that it’s someone else’s job to get rid of it, and that if I wanted to I could pack up and flee in my jammies in the middle of the night.
This all makes perfect sense to me, much in the same way that my reluctance to get married isn’t because I fear commitment or think my boy isn’t oh-so-dreamy. My strong principles demand that I never wear white shoes. Not even for a few hours. What’s not to get?