Those Wacky Neighbors, Part 87

So, you know how the downstairs neighbors annoy me with their cigarette smoke and their late-night LOUD music? Well, last week, I woke up at around 4am - my kid was coughing and I, too, felt lousy - and when I got back into bed after taking care of both of us, I realized that the baby downstairs was not just crying, but screaming in that way that babies have with that cry that turns adults' brains into Jell-O. And it went on for some time. Now, the sound wafting up through the heating vents or whatever was pretty faint, but it was enough to cause my entire body to go rigid, my eyes to open wide to the point of bulging, and my hair to stand up on my head. I cannot for the life of me imagine what hell it must have been to actually be downstairs holding the shrieking creature. And the crying went on, uninterrupted (with lungs like that, the kid is going to grow up to be an opera singer).

Fast forward several days, and my own kid managed to get me into a state simply by refusing to put on his pants. Seriously - I had no idea it was that easy to reduce me to a blubbering mess. Apparently, all it takes is the removal of one's pants and I become a shrieking banshee. Anyway, about the fourth time I screamed, in a gutteral and unearthly voice (which, by the way, did not faze the kid one little bit), "put on your pants!," I considered how it might sound to my neighbors.

And so, I have revised my opinion of the downstairs neighbors. Not about the smoking - that is vile and must stop. But about the noise. When I hear that pounding bass at 1am, I think, "well, they deserve to rock out a little, with that crying baby." And I figure that maybe the music gives them a little break. Plus, I've heard that the vibrations are soothing for babies. No, really. I may even lend them my Monkey Business cd.