Your Friends & Neighbors

I played an initially rousing game of e-tag with GF's neighbor's girlfriend since meeting her that fateful Friday. This was somewhat awkward, seeing as GF has yet to meet either of these people that live above her while I recently ran into the neighbor while smoking outside. Considering that his girlfriend had told me her beau actually doubted the story of that Friday and thought she had drank his beer (one beer, mind you), I was a little disturbed when one of the first things he said to me after introducing myself was, "Yeah ... heard you had a cold one."

He smiled when he said this, but I can't imagine what I looked like. It seemed a tad bit awkward to mention so randomly. GF was rather put off by this as well. "I'm not sure I even want to meet this guy," she said.

I tried to give the man the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he doesn't buy beer all that often, perhaps. In an effort to make up for the single beer, I purchased one of the oversized cans at the local liquor store to give the neighbor the next time I encountered him.

Now, on the one hand, I could just forget about this and hope I never run into these people except for the occasional passing in the complex. On the other hand, there's the matter of these e-mails from the neighbor's girlfriend—the correspondence accelerated by "really great" news about an e-mail she'd received that "might be just what the dr [sic] ordered."

Without any details about the contents of said e-mail, I still raised my hopes that maybe this girl had stumbled upon something promising. I guess I should have known better.

I get e-mails all the time from senders named things like "Careers" or "recruting" who refer to me by using my middle name as though it were my surname. I would assume anybody else who receives similar offers would delete them just as I do.

Instead, after going back and forth with e-mails about when I could stop by or vice versa, the girl instead slipped the "really great" offer under GF's door one day while we were out. Indeed, the pay they were talking about freelance writing was "really great." But upon GF typing the company's name into a search engine, the very first popular link had the company's name followed by the word "scam."

"That can't be good," GF said. She clicked the link, taking us to a site I was unfortunately familiar with when I had investigated a similar offer that showed up in my e-mail. That job, of course, was defended by an individual claiming the online college was comparable with "most Ivy League" schools he's attended. You tell me.

So I relayed the bad news, via e-mail of course, to the neighbor's girlfriend. I haven't heard back from her since.

And the beer for her boyfriend still sits in its bag in GF's fridge.

Now, on the one hand ...