Don't Mess With The White Girl

We share a hallway with one other apartment. Being extremely conscious of the environment, I often turn off the hallway lights, particularly during the day when there's plenty of sunlight. I also have harbored a secret hope that this custom will curb the child discipline habits used by our neighbors, which entail them putting their 3 year old child, who has a penchant for screaming, in the hallway until he stops. While our walls are thick, the front door is not, so the child (who I like to refer to as 'the evil one') can be heard through our entire apartment. I've been known to open the door and give him the 'evil blue-eyed stare', which is usually pretty effective in getting him to pipe down (and is probably instilling quite a fear into him of tall, pale faced women).

One day, after returning from work, I routinely turned off the hallway light as I entered my apartment. Less than a moment after entering, someone started frantically beating on my door. I opened the door to a woman that got in my face and proceeded to scream at me in Shanghainese (now I know where her son gets his expansive lung capacity). She kept gesturing at the light switch, indicating that she was not happy that I had turned off the light. If she had been able to speak English, or had approached me in a less aggressive manner, I would have tried to either explain or mime to her that the light isn't really necessary during the day, and that energy conservation is both economical and environmentally-friendly. But this lady was looking for a fight, so I gave it to her. I don't consider myself a screamer or aggressive, but this lady really pushed my buttons, so the two of us yelled at each other for a good ten minutes. I have no idea what she was saying, or really what I was saying for that matter, but it was loud and I used vocal chords I'm not sure I knew I had. After ten minutes of screaming and getting nowhere, she started making hand gestures for what I assume meant you're crazy', at which point I called her the only Mandarin swear word I know, the number 250. I was taught this word meant crazy, not in a 'girlfriend, you so crazy' way, but in a very mean, 'you need to be institutionalized' way. Once I called her that, she gave me a look of death and went back into her apartment.

The next day, I received a call from our building's property management desk informing me that a formal complaint had been filed against me for turning off the lights in the common area. After some explanation, the service person agreed that the lights would be turned off during the day, and kept on at night.

So now, whenever I pass our neighbor in our hallway, she gives me nasty looks and starts calling me what I assume are mean names that rival 250. I just give her a calm stare, and try to be the bigger person (not hard to do, considering I've got a good 5 inches on her and could take her if I needed to).

Not an actual photo of my neighbor, but you get the idea...