There’s nothing quite like a Monday morning to remind us all how happy we are to be back at work!

Here’s a story to put things in perspective; a story that comes from the files of “Wow….am I ever glad that didn’t happen to me!”

While I may be the very proud owner of a large terrace at my condominium, I’m not on the ground floor.  I’m actually on the second floor.

But just as some people say with respect to competition that “second place is just the first loser,” I think that living on the second floor of a building is different in number only, if you’re worried about those drawbacks to the ground floor that most people do…

Some ground floor units are all the rage, but I’ve probably heard more cons than pros.  It all comes down to one thing: safety.

People live in condominiums for a multitude of different reasons, but surely safety falls near the latter half of that list.  There’s a security guard, there are cameras, and there are more locked doors to get through than just the front door of a house.

But when you live on the ground floor of a condominium, it makes it that much easier for a would-be evil-doer to access your home.  I’ve seen condominiums such as DNA at 1 Shaw Street where the “private garden terrace” is really just a fenced-in area in front of the condo door that is adjacent to a footpath!  How many people walk by that person’s living room on a daily basis?

At my building, there are six units on the second floor that possess these majestic 440-square-foot terraces that I rave about.  Two of the terraces, my own and my neighbor’s, back onto a laneway that runs parallel to King Street East.

My poor next door neighbor has had a nightmare of a time living at King’s Court in the past two months, and her problems have been like a snowball rolling down a hill…

About two months ago, my neighbor was minding her own business one night at about 3:00AM when she was awoken to what sounded like a saw.  She layed in bed for a couple of moments before she got up to investigate, and when she entered her living room she was horrified to see a man sliding through her window as he sawed away at the metal frame trying to make more room to fit through.

Naturally, she screamed loud enough to wake up the whole building (except me…), and the man fled.

How did the man flee, you ask?  By the same method of which he entered her patio in the first place: he climbed down the tree in the laneway!

There is a large tree out back of our patios that is directly next to the wall of our building.  This man, presumably an aforementioned “evil-doer,” climbed up the tree and onto her patio, and proceeded to break in to her unit.

What the man’s intentions were, we can only hazard a guess.

After two days of police investigation on the scene, my neighbor realized that nothing would ever be accomplished at the hands of the police, and thus she took matters into her own hands.

She lobbied the City of Toronto to cut down the massive tree which provided assistance to her would-be assailant, and eventually, they obliged.

I awoke one morning to the sound of a chainsaw cutting down this gorgeous, leafy, beauty that used to canopy my terrace and block out the building behind it.

Things just don’t look the same anymore, but apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way…

About a month after my neighbor had a break in, and a few days after the tree was cut down, she arrived home to find a note had been slipped under her door.  It read:

THANKS FOR CUTTING DOWN THE TREE.  SELFISH JERK.  THIS IS NOT OVER!!!

And thus, she called the police….again.

The note was written on a square of paper, and in all capital letters that looked like they had been traced from a stencil.

But I told her to look on the bright side; at least the note wasn’t one of those scary ransom notes from the movies where all the letters are cut out of magazines!

Once again, the police did nothing to help this poor girl.

So she went down to talk to the property manager and ask if anybody had asked any questions about the tree.  Her detective work paid off!  There was only one person who asked about the tree, and it was the lady who lived directly above her!

My neighbor now knew who had written this threatening note, and it actually made her feel a little safer since the lady was middle-aged and seemingly normal.  But that view changed a few days later.

I was personally sitting out on my patio last week when I heard a lady one level up yell, “Time to close up shop, ladies!  It’s getting late!”  The woman who lived above my neighbor was clearly displeased with the amount of noise these girls were making…..which was to my ears, none!

A few minutes later, as I sat in what I considered to be complete silence, the woman returned to yell, “Shut up you bleeping bleeps!”  I couldn’t believe the word she used…

Finally, five minutes later, I heard what sounded like a waterfall, followed by screams.

The crazy woman on the third floor had dumped a bucket of water on the girls’ heads!  One of them began crying while the other one looked around to see what was happening.  Amidst all the confusion, a second bucket of water was dumped onto their patio.

So she called the police…..again!  But this time, she had somebody to complain about!

The police knocked on the door of the lady on the third floor, and they made her promise “not to do it again,” but nothing really came out of this.

Two days later, there were eggs all over the ground on my neighbor’s patio.  Eggs that looked like they had been dropped from above, but not from too high as the splatter-pattern would suggest (thanks to Gil Grissom on C.S.I. for teaching me that!).

My neighbor is now constantly frightened of the crazy woman who lives above her, and the memories of a scary man who tried to break into her condo are a distant blur.

What’s that saying…..”Good fences make good neighbors”?  Well in this case, a fence just won’t do.  The tree out back is gone and nobody can climb up onto my neighbor’s patio anymore, but now she has to deal with the people living directly above her!  She can’t exactly put a tent up over her terrace to deflect the oncoming buckets of water and eggs….could she?

Perhaps it’s just the hand she’s been dealt, or perhaps she brought this on herself—warranted or not.

But it sure puts a damper to come home to your gorgeous condominium every night and worry about your crazy neighbor.

It kind of makes you wonder about your own neighbors, doesn’t it?