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Behod. My first apartment building.  Behold the glory.  Behold the beauty.  Behold the window at street level that leads into the basement apartment where both Barack Obama and I spent many a long winter night, the window on which some drunk guy peed while DH was out of town.

Not that Obama and I slept there at the same time.  He lived there years before DH and I did.  But according to this article, Obama shared all the same wonderful memories that my husband and I did of Somerville’s Winter Hill area, a place affectionately known as “Slum-erville”, a place about which my aunt once asked if there was a less seedy way in, a place where drunks, thugs, Irish mafiosos and parking tickets abound.  Ah, good times.

The article says he lived in the basement apartment, of which there are only two in this building.  I can not thus be absolutely certain that the presidential candidate killed spiders in the same abode I did, but the chances are pretty high he did.  And the parking tickets mentioned are so familiar to me, I could almost smell the exhaust.  I learned how to parallel park in Winter Hill, having no other parking options available but street parking, and I learned that if you pay a man $90 cash, he will give you back your car that he is about to tow and never mention it again. Like I said, good times.

I have to admit, this makes me a little giddy.  I don’t know why, but I feel like if I was ever in a rally for Obama, I could shout, “I KNOW YOUR SOMERVILLE PAIN!” and he would turn, look at me, and smile, and we would have some kind of kismet connection as the memories of ice, snow, and dirty sludge flashed between us.

I never want to live in Somerville again.

Go Obama.