Stop dropping your bowling balls!
By MADISON SEEMAN — meseeman@ucdavis.edu
Dear upstairs neighbor:
Neighbors are a natural side effect of any community. Whether you’re separated by a dubiously sturdy fence, acres of land or paper-thin plaster walls, everybody has them — and some of us can hear their (mostly) domestic pitter-patter a little more than others.
I was raised to “love thy neighbor,” and although I’m re-inspecting my relationship with religion, I still come to you with love, compassion and just one, multilayered plea: no more strange noises!
Let me paint a picture: In teen dramas, the protagonist returns to her bedroom after a long day, tired and aching, to the tunes of a 2000s indie singer trying (and failing) to channel Fiona Apple. My soundtrack looks a little different; with a budding headache and headphones that only work in one ear, my existential crises are set to the sounds of rolling, stomping and a mysterious (but persistent) thumping. It’s interrupting my 20-something angst!
Although we’ve never met, I’m plagued with burning questions for you. What could possibly be compelling you to constantly rearrange your furniture? Am I living below an aspiring interior designer, or is the feng shui of your bedroom that messed up? Are you conducting the Fitness Gram Pacer Test in your living room? Why do your footfalls sound like falling bags of sand, and do you seriously wear your shoes in the house ALL the time?
I listen to the struggles of the problematic roommate situation next door while making my lunchtime struggle meal (baby carrots and hummus) and, when I go to bed at the (mostly) reasonable hour of 2 a.m., I drift off to the repetitive rhythm of the sliding wheels of your closet door. Who plays dress up at 2 a.m.?
And what could you possibly be listening to? I mean, music is a universal language, but I’m not sure I understand the appeal of your bass-heavy brown noise, which is just loud enough to fight the PinkPantheress playing in my singular functioning earbud. Maybe I’m the infamous nosy neighbor, but it’s hard not to notice when my walls are thinner than my patience.
So, if you’re feeling generous, I implore you to maybe turn down your speaker’s bass, or at the very least listen to some real music. Maybe even take your shoes off before you go for another round of pacing. And please — when a man and a woman love each other very much, I’d rather not have to hear it.
If you could also just politely tell your very shy vacuum cleaner to just get over her performance anxiety, that would be great. She’ll start in one dense burst, then stop, then start again and stop, over and over again until she’s timidly made her way through all the dust in the apartment. It’s almost sweet, but mostly annoying — every time I wishfully think it’s over, she just starts again.
To be fair, you’re not the worst of my neighbors. I once lived under a family that had an admirably consistent weekly midnight movie night, an impressive surround sound system and a dedicated love of action movies. I’d fall asleep guessing the movie by the frequency of cinematic explosions vibrating my bedside table.
And then there’s that man across the hall who lets out a blood-curdling scream every once in a while — probably a computer science major.
Then again, can I really judge? What did my downstairs neighbors think of my short-lived living room rollerskating phase? And what do they hear when I scramble to chase my roommate’s persistent little tuxedo cat off of our kitchen counter? Do they think our Australian accents are getting any better?
Despite it all, I do like living in an apartment. Waking up to the sounds of life outside your own — the gentle hum of a shower upstairs or soft conversation from your roommates in the kitchen — can be nice, as long as it’s later than 9 a.m. Living in community is about compromise; sometimes life’s soundtrack is your neighbor who very audibly regrets pursuing higher education.
I’ll cut you some slack — maybe student housing makes everyone a bad neighbor. But maybe you could try a little harder not to drop your bowling balls.
Written by: Madison Seeman –– meseeman@ucdavis.edu
Disclaimer: (This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
