of course you know, this means war

The downstairs neighbors outdid themselves last night. I've never met anyone else in my life with the capability to magnify the volume of any activity they pursue -- whether it be talking over breakfast, talking over pillows, opening drawers, shutting doors, hanging pictures -- by about eight decibels. It's like a superpower. A superannoyingpower.

Last night they invited a friend or two (or ten, by the sound of it) who share this power. They laughed all evening. We had to turn up the volume on the TV just to hear Comedy Central. Now, the laughter doesn't sound pleasant and inviting; of course not. It sounds like the Weird Sisters plotting the ruination of Macbeth while hyped up on the contents of their cauldron. Cackling and all.

My tired, sick roommate and my tired self called it a night and retired to our separate rooms. The party continued. I was trying to read a little bit of The Other Wind to relax before falling asleep, but my concentration kept breaking. Then my cell phone buzzed. Who's calling at this hour? I wondered (yipes, you know you're working your way toward thirty when 12:30 in the morning becomes ungodly). I'll just check the caller ID and get back to them tomorrow.

It was my roommate. Wondering if she'd hit a button by accident, I picked up. "...Hello?" "Sarah, the neighbors are so loud," she croaked. "I don't even want to get out of bed but they're sooo loud."

So I got up and started jumping up and down like a reeling kangaroo or a five-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. The neighbors and their house guests shut up for a minute before they began slamming doors. (And these people are well into their fifties, mind you.) The door-slamming subsided and I flopped back in bed, but then they all congregated in the room directly below mine and began conversing so loudly I could hear every individual word.

I sat up and yelled, "WHAT THE HELL?" The noise stopped and the guests departed soon after. By then I didn't really give a damn as I had put my earplugs in. But really. I don't care that you're fifty and I don't care that you're happy and I don't care that you're from Texas (according to Deborah a remarkably loud state) and I don't care that you have friends. Be and have all of that, just keep quiet enough that I don't know anything about any of it. We never heard our last neighbor shutting her drawers.

The leasing office is hearing about this as soon as their doors open on Mondays. There are other apartment communities around the area that are known for their loudness and sociability. Ours is known for its silence and peace. If these people can't tolerate that, then the simplest answer is to move. Or they'll be hearing from the leasing office quite a lot.