Meet G.

A thin, mousey, stereotypical yoga instructor. She’d rather be called a Yogini, out of respect and all. It’s no coincidence that Yoginis are also known to be female demons. I remember my parents telling me how great G was after they had met her. They should have warned me that G is one of those people who is only nice to adults. I decided to give her a chance until I received that first email. Her email went on about how excited she was to meet me.  Nice gesture I guess. I didn’t judge her until I got to the bottom of her email where she left her personal blog link and a link to the yoga studio where she teaches. She also couldn’t think of a title for the email, and left it at “No Subject.” Enough said. No one should ever leave a subject line blank. Could she not have come up with something to put into the subject?

Our first meeting wasn’t like most initial meetings. G rang the buzzer and seemed sweet. She seemed apologetic as she had been vacuuming all day and moving furniture. She embarrassingly asked if we could hear her upstairs. We didn’t want to hurt her feelings so we said that we understood it was an old house and not to worry. She replied “Good. I came down to tell you that you guys are really noisy and I could hear you unpacking all day. I just want us to have a good relationship, so try to keep it down.”

“Try to keep it down” was something we would get used to hearing, on an almost daily basis. It’s funny because for someone so dainty and who likely weighs about 110lbs, G stomps around upstairs like an elephant. Sometimes I wake up thinking there’s an earthquake or that she’s going to break the floorboards. 

G owns concrete slippers, or at least that’s what it sounds like. She must forget that humans live below her. Frankly, she just doesn’t care. She has no idea that when she drops the smallest item upstairs, like a penny,  downstairs it sounds like she just emptied an entire bag of marbles onto the floor, on purpose. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was dropping items just to bother us. 

Not only does she teach yoga at the local studio, she also enjoys personal meditation and yoga practice in her home. Sometimes I hear G’s practice music, and it’s not the regular peaceful and relaxing yoga music I’ve heard before. G enjoys this weird African/voodoo sounding music. She’s the type of person you wouldn’t be surprised to see carrying around voodoo dolls.  

Let me make this clear, G doesn’t own the house that we live in. She’s just subletting the flat above us. But for some strange reason G is on a power trip. Not only is G a confrontational face-to-face person, she’s also a confrontational emailer.  She likes to send large emails explaining what we need to fix about our living styles and she signs “sorry to sound like a nag” at the bottom. It’s not the fact that we’re students, although that helps her power trip, but she’s not the type to be confrontational with adults. She also doesn’t like other confrontational people. So when she meets one, she gets flustered easily. 

G can’t stand noise, it bothers her. Daily conversations and dish washing make her volatile. She doesn’t understand why we can’t simply live together and not make noise; all the while she has yet to remove her concrete slippers. What bothers G the most has to do with respect, or her definition of respect.  

G doesn’t believe young people respect her. She did try to give them a chance before. G allowed two international students to live with her and she enjoyed explaining to her friends that they thought she was a goddess and they would never do anything to upset her. G wasn’t kidding. Apparently she expected that this would magically happen if she told enough people. G ended up kicking these respectful students out after a few months. 

G now believes that all young people are the same. G thinks we slam the heavy 85 year old door on purpose, just to make her cringe. G likes to call the property manager and landlord to put in an official complaint. She finds the need to call both the manager and landlord just to show how serious the situation is to her. She will especially put in a complaint if her feelings get hurt and when she feels like you weren’t being nice enough to her. 

G is a 40 year old woman who looks like she just celebrated her 30^th birthday. It must be the yoga. Actually, it is the yoga, just ask her. When people tell G how great she looks for her age, she doesn’t reply with a “thanks” or “don’t make me blush,” response. She simply smiles and replies with a matter of fact “it’s the yoga.”

G has a tough time trusting people. She especially finds it difficult to trust young people. After living above us for the past year, she still questions us every garbage day when we take the communal compost bin to the curb. “Are you sure it’s compost day?” Our response? “I think so….” while we look at the twelve other compost bins that our neighbors have placed at the curb.

G blatantly informs us of the parties we’ve apparently been having. Maybe next time I’ll be invited to my own party. G always jumps to conclusions, and expects the worst. She blames us for being too noisy and tells us that she “heard about our party.” I’m not sure how many parties G has been to, but a party of 3 girls seems rather boring, don’t you think?

Don’t get G angry though, if you do then be prepared to take a fall. When G believes that people aren’t respecting her, she won’t fulfill her winter duties which include salting the front step.

G is very nervous of leaving her car in her own driveway. So to solve this problem, she believes parking on an angle will help keep neighbors and others from parking too close to her.G admits that she doesn’t feel obliged to apologize. She never apologizes. Even when G knows she’s wrong, she will place the blame onto others.

G is that woman you see and question why she’s unmarried and living alone. But soon after meeting her you start to answer your own question.