The Unhappiest Place on Earth

While waiting to move for grad school I rented a room in a house to save money. When I met the woman who lived there, she had a cute toy poodle, the rent was cheap and the place had a washer and dryer. But after living there for a week I noticed a weird noise coming from her room in the morning right before I would normally wake up. I would hear the dog bark once and then hear this loud zap then yip like the dog was in pain. This went on for an hour every morning.

When I asked her what that noise was, she said, “My dog barks too much and I didn’t want her to bother you so I got a shock collar for her.”

The dog barking didn’t bother me at all. What bothered me was her using a shock collar on a five pound dog when I had made no mention that the barking was an issue. I told her she didn’t have to do that, but she said that she didn’t care.

One day I went to use the washer and dryer and it was gone. She had sold them. I told her that the use of the washer and dryer was one of the reasons I moved in.

“They’re mine; I can do what I want with them,” she said.

Later that week she also sold the entire living room set, the TV and the dining room table. She was also obsessed with Tinkerbell, the Disney character. She had a full costume and wore it around the house and sometimes outside, her dog’s name was Tinkerbell and she always wore clothes with Tinkerbell somewhere on them. She even had the Julia Roberts-in-Hook-Tinkerbell haircut. She only took vacations to Disney World and had already been 12 times and was going later that year. This was why she sold all the furniture in the house — to pay for another Disney World vacation.