The Apartment Flood of 2010

Posted by Lindsay:

Oshkosh—It has been nine months since last year’s tragedy at the infamous Lakeview Terrace Apartments in Oshkosh. The harrowing tale of the two young women who resided in apartment A102 captivated the community for the better part of a day.

It was a Friday morning in mid December when Lindsay Dal Porto, a UW Oshkosh super-senior at the time, noticed her cat Dexterious was paying particular attention to the corner of her bedroom door. Thinking he was just amusing himself with a bug, she paid no attention.

However, upon further inspection Dal Porto discovered there was water dripping from the corner of her doorframe.

It wasn’t long before she realized water was coming out of every light fixture in the apartment, creating a massive puddle that quickly spread the entire length of the hallway.

“It was terrifying,” Dal Porto says of her discovery. “Water was coming from everywhere, and there was no way to stop it!”

Not knowing what to do, Dal Porto rushed into Holly Hartmann’s room, screaming in terror, hoping her roommate would have a solution.

           

“The way she was screaming made me think there were zombies at the door,” Hartmann recalls. “Or that hotdogs were on sale again at Pick N Save.”

As Hartmann emerged from her room to see what Dal Porto was yelling about, she stood aghast as water began to seep into her bedroom.

Quickly taking action, Hartmann had the idea to see if Brittany, the building manager, was in her office. Surely she would be able to help.

Per usual Brittany was nowhere to be found, so Hartmann whipped out her flip phone and dialed the emergency number taped to the office door, but was disappointed once again when no one answered.

Not knowing what else to do, Hartmann left a desperate message detailing the situation happening in apartment A102.

When they returned to their apartment, the water level had risen to an alarming level; it now sloshed over the tops of their shoes. Sure of their eminent doom, the girls clung to each other, hoping someone would call them back.

When they had all but given up hope, the maintenance guy came bursting in, armed with a mop.

“We were so relieved when he showed up,” Dal Porto says. “We thought for sure we were going to drown in that awful apartment.”

At some point during all the confusion, the building owner showed up in an important looking suit and told the girls they would be accommodated for the weekend at the River Place apartments down the road.

“We grabbed as much of our shit as we could and ran for the new place,” Hartmann says. “It was like spending the weekend in the glittery butthole of a unicorn.”

A witness to the incident, who wishes to remain nameless, recalls seeing the girls running from Lakeview Terrace to their temporary home, Dal Porto clutching her cat as she sprinted down the sidewalk.

Three days, two workers and countless buckets of water later, the apartment was habitable again. It wasn’t until Monday morning the girls found out what had happened that terrifying day. Due to neglect, the toilet of the unoccupied apartment two floors above had burst sometime in the night, spewing water for hours and hours until it finally found its way down to the first floor.

“I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t notice the water when I did,” Dal Porto says. “I’m just grateful we were able to get out in time.”

If there is anything we can all learn from this tragic tale, it’s this: spewing toilets are nothing to joke around about.

Holly's Magical Wand of Wonder

Holly's Magical Wand of Wonder

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Holly's Fucking Plastic Stick

Holly: My parents went to this AARP convention in Orlando, and while they were there, they stopped at the Harry Potter theme park and bought me the most awesome souvenir ever - a real live Harry Potter wand.

Lindsay: So Holly comes back from a weekend home, and she's all, "Guess what I got?!"

Holly: I couldn't wait to show Lindsay my new magic wand - we've both been Harry Potter fans for a long time. I really wanted to dazzle her with my new magical skills.

Lindsay: Holly came creeping around my door frame, hiding something behind her back. Then, giggling like a crazy person, she pulls out this fake wand - with a flourish - and tries to put some kind of spell on me.

Holly: Lindsay was unimpressed by my new wand. I started to worry that she wasn't taking my magical capabilities seriously. In a way, this was understandable with her being a Muggle and all, but since she's my friend and roommate, I figured she needed to make peace with it.

Lindsay: I don't think she knows it's not real.

Holly: I tried to demonstrate my magical skills by turning the lights on and off for her, or by changing the channels on the telly with my wand. Telly, by the way, is Harry Potter-speak for TV.

Lindsay: She would hide the remote in one hand and wave her wand at the TV, pretending it was her "magical powers". And she'd run into my room in the middle of the afternoon yelling, "Lumos!" and then turn on the light switch.

Holly: Coincidence.

Lindsay: Delusions.

Holly: I even tried performing magic on our kitty, thinking maybe that would open Lindsay's eyes to the pure truth happening in front of her.

Lindsay: She would point her wand at the cat whenever he was sleeping and yell, "EXPELLIARMUS!" at the top of her lungs, which usually caused him to wake up and run away. She seemed to count that as a success.

Holly: After a while I began to wonder if Lindsay was somehow impervious to my magic.

Lindsay: She started hitting me with the wand.

Holly: I guess Lindsay is just a typical Muggle.

Lindsay: I wonder at what point I'm supposed to seek professional help.

The Frankenpooper

The Frankenpooper

It was the summer before we would turn 21, and we had just moved into our very first apartment, with our own bathroom, our own bedrooms, and a real kitchen. It was a vast improvement from living in a tiny dorm room and sharing a bathroom with 30 other girls. After spending all morning and most of the afternoon unpacking and organizing our stuff, we were excited to see our friends. We decided to have some people over to play drinking games, so we invited our usual group of friends, including Sarah who lived just down the street.

When Sarah came she brought her two roommates: Jamie and Madge. We’d met Jamie a few times before, but this was our first encounter with Madge. We should have known there was something different about her.

We all crowded around the coffee table in our tiny living room, playing games, drinking, and loving the fact that there was no such thing as “Quiet Hours” in our apartment. As the night went on we decided to head out to a house party. As we were getting ready, Madge disappeared for a while, but we didn’t really pay much attention because we didn’t really know her anyway.

When we finally left our apartment, Sarah, Jamie and Madge decided to head home. The rest of that night is a blur. We no doubt paid $5 for a cup so we could be crammed into the basement of some shitty house, bumping into everyone as we made our way to the keg in the corner. At some point in the night we stumbled home and passed out.

It wasn’t until the next morning that we noticed the horrifying truth.

Lindsay was up first, at the crack of dawn despite having been out drinking all night long. Her first thought: I have to pee – NOW. As she stumbled into the bathroom and lifted the toilet lid, she saw it. She stared into the murky brown water with horror as a single kernel of corn floated around the toilet bowl. She could just make out an enormous mass lurking beneath the brownish-green surface.

With a blood-curdling scream she raced into Holly’s room and woke her up. Holly, still pretty wasted from the night before, wearily followed Lindsay into the bathroom, wondering what the fuck she was so upset about. Holly nearly puked when she saw what was in the toilet. As we looked at the toilet, then at each other, then back at the toilet, we realized something: we didn’t have a plunger. How the fuck were we going to get this thing down the drain?!? Holly, still too drunk to drive, handed Lindsay her keys and we headed to Wal-Mart. Holly was still on the brink of puking, so Lindsay ventured into the Oshkosh Wal-Mart on a mission to find a plunger.

Five minutes later she came back, proudly grasping her weapon. When we got back to our apartment we spent a good amount of time arguing over who was going to face the beast. Since Holly still looked like death, it was up to Lindsay to conquer the Frankenturd. And what a battle it was. Wielding her plunger with a sense of justice derived from the gods themselves, she plunged, and plunged, and plunged, and when she thought she had plunged enough, she flushed.

Chaos ensued. The water kept rising until it spewed over the edge, corn kernels and feces spreading out across the bathroom floor.

Eventually, after hours of scrubbing and a massive amount of bleach, our bathroom was clean. Probably cleaner than it had ever been. As the weeks went by and we began to heal, we put two and two together: the disappearance of Madge and the appearance of the Frankenturd. From that day forward we were always leery of Madge and her bowels of doom. Since we were never really friends before that fateful night, she was pretty easy to avoid, but she will forever live on in our memories as the Frankenpooper.