The first apartment I lived in was a three bedroom basement apartment in Boston. The floor was so warped that it was impossible to walk in a straight line. We never had to worry about the heat though, since the hot water return for the whole building ran through the place and kept the apartment at a consistent 80 degrees F. This also meant that we had mosquitoes in January.

Needless to say, it was a party house. It was also located across the street from the bar where everyone in the apartment worked. By the end of that year, everyone was a little sick of each other. Two of the guys got into a massive fight and both of them decided to split before the lease was up.

The other guy and I were then left with the task of getting the security deposits back and moving. This meant cleaning up a year's worth of broken glass and dried beer and spirits from the floors and wiping down walls that had seen chimney levels of all kinds of smoke every single day. We also had to spackle the ceiling, replace the bathroom door and fill in the gouges left by the cat. Oh, and we had to make sure we wouldn't get fucked over because there was sewage leaking into my room for three days and the super wouldn't do shit about it until I got her drunk, on me. Time was also of the essence, because I had to fly out for my study abroad the day that the lease was up.

Finally, we had the place all cleaned up except for one thing: the massive sectional sofa we had all helped to lower through the ground-level windows. After staring at the couch and coming up with no solutions, I had an idea.

"Let's go to REI (an outdoor sporting goods store) and get an axe. We'll just chop this fucker up."

My friend looked at me from the corner of his eye. We'd been told that we'd be charged for anything we left behind that needed to be removed when the new tenants arrived.

"Yeah, let's do it," he said. So, we got the axe and a crowbar and went to town on the sectional. In the depths of the sofa we found two lost remotes, about $25 in loose change and something like 11 lighters. In the end, the axe paid for itself. After that, all we had to do was push all the debris into trash bags and then into the dumpster.

My roommate then dropped me off at the airport so I could make my flight. On the flight over, I was sat next to a girl in the same program. She had never flown before and was terrified. She kept screaming every time there was turbulence. I grabbed her hand to shut her up and fell asleep with my head on her shoulder. Fortunately, I didn't drool as much as I normally do. When I woke up, we were making our descent into Amsterdam.