He came downstairs brandishing a screwdriver

When I was in my early twenties I rented a shoebox apartment in the armpit of St Kilda.

My landlord, an excitable 70-something Jewish man, lived upstairs with his excitable 20-something Russian bride.

(They had a tumultuous relationship ‒ they were either loving or fighting, but they were always very, very loud.)

My entrance to the apartment was via a dodgy back alleyway. Someone had obviously tried to jimmy the door open, because as I was leaving for work the front door handle fell clean off.

So I called the landlord. A few minutes later he came downstairs with a screwdriver, which he handed to me.

“You want me to fix the door?” I asked.

He took a long drag of his cigarette, and began to chuckle.

“No. This is your new door handle, key, and security weapon … all rolled in one!” he barked through a coughing fit.

True dinks.

I still remember the strange looks I got when I arrived at work with my screwdriver.

My country-living parents found these big-city stories highly amusing. They were the ones, after all, who (lovingly) threatened to change the locks on our family home, and thus drop-punted me into the real world twenty years ago.

What a learning experience it was!

I learnt how to make my money stretch (hello homebrew), how to cook (once a flatmate asked me, “How long do I cook two-minute noodles for?”), the art of diplomacy and negotiation (eventually the landlord replaced the door handle with a … second-hand handle), and the importance of cleaning (something admittedly I hadn’t placed a high value on … because up until that point my mother had done it for me).

Yes, you’re not living until you’ve had at least one stint in a share house ‒ it’s the ultimate rite of passage.