The chill of the winter air bit at my skin as I headed out the door. A quick trip to the store was in order before my dad came home. I turned and locked the door to my apartment and noticed that my neighbors had left the their screen door open again. The wind blew it into the side of the building, the resulting “thump” echoing through the walls. Just great.
My dad and I lived in simple apartment on the northwest side of the city: three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two floors, and one extremely annoying set of neighbors. They had first moved in just after I turned 18, about a month after I headed off for college. While I spent those early months away I heard the horror stories from my father. They were loud. They always had guests over. They were loud. I laughed and said I’m glad I don’t have to deal with them.
Then, finances caught up with me. I just couldn’t afford the expensive private college that I was attending, so after my freshmen year I dropped out. I had always planned on getting back into school, but I knew that it would take a few years to make enough money to ensure that I didn’t have trouble again. And so I moved back home. Little did I know that moving home meant dealing with the maelstrom that was our neighbors.
They lived in the second of two apartments, set side by side, on the property. Theirs was a mirror of ours. But whereas we had two people inside and plenty of space, they had a small circus. Two parents and six kids shared space with a large dog and three cats. The kids were almost all girls, there was only one boy, and they were all younger than I was.
The friction started almost immediately. Their guests had a bad habit of parking in such a fashion that we couldn’t move our cars. Their youngest kids were out at all ours of the night and seemed to enjoy knocking on our windows at eleven o’clock at night. And so the arguing began.
We argued with the parents, we argued with their son (the second oldest of their children). We had to reprimand their children for damaging our property. We had to put up with the noise and the parking despite our protests to the landlord. And so it went for years.
They had managed to improve their behavior somewhat, and we hadn’t had many problems for a while, when their oldest daughter turned eighteen two weeks ago. I don’t know how they squeezed all the visitors for her party into that apartment, but I needed six cars moved just to get out of our driveway. As a result, I was late for work. I’m sure you can understand my frustration. But I thought I had again made my position clear to them.
Yet, there it was. A repulsive green Volkswagen blocking in my car. I saw red. I had honestly had enough. These people were interfering in the day to day operation of my life, and I had reached the limits of my patience. I stormed back to their door and rang the bell. I waited patiently for a moment, but nobody answered. I rang again, but still got no response. So I pounded on the door. Finally she answered.
She was the oldest of the family’s daughters, and freshly eighteen at that. A few inches shorter than my own 5’6”, with long, flowing, dishwater blonde hair, she answered the door with a look of impatience and annoyance on her face. “Good,” I thought. “I’m being an inconvenience.”
