There’s a Butt on My Balcony

Humor

It was an ordinary summer morning. I had just finished reading the news and was savoring my first cup of coffee for the day.

I started scrolling through my emails. When you live in a high-rise apartment complex, you can expect several emails a day on the dedicated email group.

Topics range from ‘there will be a temporary power cut in XYZ block due to maintenance work’ to irate emails from residents about how much power is being wasted in the common areas. High rises have their own set of problems. Sometimes there’s an email from someone complaining about a suspicious trail of liquid in the elevator. The email informs us that a smell test confirmed it is dog pee. “Why can’t dog owners clean up?” questions the email writer. Such an email is usually followed by a deafening silence since a lot of residents are guilty!

Today I saw an email that made me choke on my coffee. I felt bad. A good sip of coffee had been wasted. I treasure every sip of my strong, brown, frothy, filter coffee. Oh wait, I digress. Coffee is good for digression.

The email subject said:

There’s a butt on my balcony.

My first instinct was to reply to the email with several questions:

Is the rest of the body attached to it? Male? Female? Naked? Someone disposed of a body and left the butt behind?

I can’t be blamed for letting my imagination run wild. I imagined a naked butt lying face-down, butt in the air, between two pots — one hibiscus and another a colorful croton.

I curbed my urge to respond and read the rest of the email. The angry resident was complaining about how someone from one of the floors above was constantly smoking and throwing cigarette butts into his balcony. If he had written ‘there are cigarette butts on my balcony’, I wouldn’t have blinked. But the email said ‘a butt’.

Please tell me I am not the only one who thinks this way.