I was 19 at the time. No family with me. Nor friends from school. Just myself for four months, two time zones away from everything I had ever known.
Moving out to Calgary in the summer of 2018 was my first memorable adventure, for all the right and wrong reasons. Like many other hopeful Canadians from decades ago, I had come out West to land my dream job. For my first University of Waterloo co-op term, I would be helping a small five-person team manage a $3 billion stock portfolio. The opportunity was too good to pass up. And so I packed my bags, shelled out an arm and a leg to Air Canada for their ridiculous baggage fees, and took my talents to Alberta.
But don’t get me wrong, this is not a reflection of my work term or the lessons learned on the job. Not even close. That’s what LinkedIn is for, after all.
Rather, this is a story of my landlord with whom I shared a common roof during these four months. For the purpose of anonymity, we’ll call him Doe.
Doe was, without a doubt, the most “interesting” person I have ever met in my life to this day. Believe it or not, all the stories I’m about to tell are 100% accurate, with no embellishment whatsoever. Couldn’t make this stuff up even if I tried. He was truly that off-the-charts.
Settling In
On a fine April afternoon, Doe greeted me at the door of his townhouse with a smile which resembled that of a single middle-aged man greeting adolescent Trick-or-Treaters on Halloween; genuinely happy, but nonetheless a bit disconcerting. He was in his late fifties, donning a pinstripe fedora, cargo shorts and flip-flops. Before I could say, “Hi, nice to meet you”, Doe swung open the door, hugged me, and with a high-pitched, heavy Mexican accent, exclaimed:
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, you’re finally here! I’m so excited!
“F***”, I thought. Should’ve known better than renting off Kijiji.
To my surprise, his place was immaculate, and also quite vibrant with an impressive collection of exotic plants in the living room. On the kitchen table, I noticed two glasses of red wine, and six other shot glasses, filled with what I assumed to be liquor from the three adjacent bottles — Grey Goose vodka, Patron tequilla, and what I soon learned to be Mezcal. Doe insisted that I share a drink with him. At the time, I didn’t drink. But not wanting to insult my host, I slowly sipped on the glass of wine while telling my backstory. Eventually, Doe had enough of my charade and cut me off:
“You’re not a drinker, are you?”
“No sir, I’m not.”
“That’s OK. Why don’t you drop off your bags upstairs, motherf***er.”
In my room, there was a unassembled table, with legs and screws on top of its base. After unpacking my stuff, I headed back downstairs to ask for a screwdriver, only to notice that all the cups had been stowed away. Doe was visibly upset — he had the same look on his face as Patrick Star when he can’t see his forehead. He scowled, “I hope you’re happy, because I had to finish all your drinks for you.”
Crap. Now he was pissed off at me and deadass drunk. I wanted to point out that he really didn’t have to finish my drinks, but somehow it didn’t feel like the right moment. After apologizing for not drinking (seriously, wtf?) I asked Doe if he had a screwdriver. “Oh yes, the table”, he remembered. “Why don’t you go upstairs and I’ll go grab it for you.”
The Table
You would imagine that setting up an IKEA table would be a fairly trivial task. Rookie mistake. After a minute or two, Doe came up grasping a tool, except it wasn’t the screwdriver I had requested; it was a steak knife.
It didn’t occur to me at the time, but this was actually an excellent piece of foreshadowing on his part. But that’s for another story…
Anyhow, there I was, trying to screw in the legs of the table with a steak knife. In all fairness, after overcoming the initial shock, it really wasn’t that difficult. But after I had assembled two of the legs, Doe chimed in.
“Michael, Michael, what the hell are you doing?”
“What do you mean? I’m putting together the table.”
“Of course you are, f***face. I mean, why are you putting the legs in like that?”
“I don’t see the problem, they seem stable.”
“Yes…… but… do you think that’s how Archimedes would do it?”
If that wasn’t enough, he demanded the knife back, and went on to disassemble the work that I had done. “Do it right this time”, he commanded.
This cycle went on for nearly two hours, until on what must’ve been the fiftieth try, he approved, “Good, you finally did it right”.
To this day, I still don’t know how Archimedes would have put together an IKEA table.
Naturally, I had some serious thoughts about moving out. But I had less than $300 in my bank account, and didn’t want to waste the $900 deposit that I had paid for one month’s rent. So after venting to my friends via Messenger and crying myself to sleep over the blunder I made renting from this guy, I decided the next morning that I would just have to tough it out.
And in hindsight, that was the right decision. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have these stories to tell, reminisce about, and laugh back upon these years later.
Part 2 coming soon!
