Every apartment building eventually develops its own oral tradition.
Stories accumulate. Nicknames emerge. People become known less by their actual identities and more by singular moments of witnessed behaviour that the building collectively decides are spiritually representative.
Which is how Georgia and Chris briefly became known as “Dumb and Dumber”.
The name originated after they were observed attempting to open the apartment entry door by holding a garage door remote directly against the keypad beside it, despite neither device being designed to:
- be held against something,
- or have something held against it.
Both appeared fully committed to the process.
The systems, less so.
The unfortunate thing about these moments is that they compress instantly into mythology. A single incident acquires narrative momentum wildly disproportionate to the actual people involved. Humans are apparently incapable of resisting this.
Of course, Georgia and Chris proved themselves to be neither dumb nor dumber. While I enjoy tinkering with smart home lighting scenes, they have their own private streaming service in their rec room and appear capable of accidentally founding small media companies in their spare time.
Which perhaps reveals something mildly uncomfortable about how communities function. Human beings become temporarily indexable before they become fully known. The brain creates provisional shorthand:
- Dog Guy
- Tall Sam
- Claire Beth
- The one with the teeth
- Dumb and Dumber
Reality arrives later and complicates things.
One drunken evening at quiz night, I eventually confessed what I christened them when they were moving in.
Fortunately, they found it significantly funnier than any Human Resources department would have.
Anyway.
Currently indexing.