There's nothing worse than a noisy neighbor, but there's also nothing worse than a nosy neighbor who has absolutely zero damn tolerance for people just trying to live out a normal, uneventful existence. There's no reason why a few teenagers watching a movie should result in a call to the police… Unless that movie is incessantly loud and extends into unreasonable hours through a shared wall or other close proximity living.
That being said…With every passing year, I find myself becoming more and more of the latter, and find myself growing into the crotchety old man that I was always destined to be.
As an example, every afternoon at precisely 4 pm, my neighbor arrives home from picking her kids up at school. The entire family then engages in an ordeal of utter cacophony that I have dubbed "The Barkening." The (probably exhausted) mother exiles her many offspring, plus the family dog, into the backyard (which is adjacent to mine), where they then bounce on their trampoline while screaming at the top of their lungs. The dog then gets excited and begins incessantly barking at the children, whom he cannot reach on top of the trampoline. Soon, the silence has evaporated, and all that can be heard in the neighborhood for the next 30 minutes is a jumbled mess of screaming, barking, and the rhythmic squeaks of the trampoline springs. Queue me, scowling out my office window with my hands on my hips and craning my neck like I'm Mrs. Kravitz from Bewitched.
The thing is, they're just a family trying to live their lives. Despite my annoyance at the ear-spitting ritual, I know I am being unreasonable for caring as much as I do. Sure, they could probably do something about the dog barking, but at the end of the day, they're picture-perfect neighbors otherwise, getting the police involved over such a minor thing would be insane.
Anyways, I digress, keep reading for this tale of revenge on an ornery old neighbor, executed by an equally cantankerous father.
