No one will care about this but other college students, but I'm still giggling about it, so here it is. Renate, being Renate, has just made a Wal-Mart run to buy Napoleon Dynamite, which she has been quoting endlessly for weeks. (I've never seen it, but hearing her cackle at the top of her lungs behind her bedroom door is starting to convince me that I need to.) When she came in, giddy with her purchase, starting to head up to her bedroom, I suddenly remembered a detail of the past 24 hours. Hanna has a new boyfriend - a Dutch guy who lives in our complex - and he's very nice, but lately, he spends more time in our apartment than some of us do. Also, Hanna is sort of shy and reserved about their relationship and doesn't talk about him unless we press her.

"Hey, did you get any sleep at all last night?" I asked with a grin.
"Huh?" she responded inelegantly, one foot on the stairs.
"I mean, with your... neighbor." Hanna's room is next to Renate's.
The foot came off the stairs as she sensed gossip. "No, what happened?" she asked, dropping her voice, eyes wide.
"You really didn't hear anything?"
"Was there a big fight or something?" she asked breathlessly.
"Uh, no," I said, trying not to laugh. "But I had to go turn on the air conditioner a couple of times to make some white noise. And the whole time, I was thinking, 'Poor Renate... if I can hear this in my room..."
"Ohhh," she said, catching on and grinning.

The rest of the conversation ("At least they stayed out of the shower this time...") doesn't need to be relayed. What does is the fact that Renate tends to crank everything up LOUD - television, radio, you name it - and that our apartment walls are - as demonstrated above - quite thin. Renate's room is, again, right next to Hanna's, and Hanna happens to be trying to sleep right now. This would be the appropriate point to insert that, along with the hilarious movie, Renate has had her typical 'dinner' of popcorn and a glass or two of red wine. Thus, her social defenses are down. Obviously, because Hanna just knocked on her door and asked very politely if she could turn the audio down.

"Is it too loud?"
"Um, yeah, just a little."
Instead of a socially accepted response along the lines of "Sorry, I'll turn it down," - our resident South African said, "O-oookay," (in that tone that means, "You're weird") and then added a very slurred, "That's not what I heard about your night last night," and shut the door.

I'm glad my door was closed, because if I had seen how red poor Hanna's face would have been, I would have burst out laughing. And I'm still giggling. Only Renate would have the nerve to say something like that, especially when she (by her own admission) didn't witness the, ahem, events at all.

Ah, the joys of college life.