When Neighbors Don't Realize They Have Neighbors

I want to keep peace with neighbors and get along.  Doesn’t everyone?  Mostly I am friends with neighbors and have keys to most of their homes and vice versa, in case of anything.  So, I don’t want to complain too much. Everyone has a right to party now and then. 

I just want people to be aware and thoughtful of others.  Not much to ask, seems to me. I was raised to think of others before myself.  My dad was annoyingly over the top about it, too.  

Even so, I’d rather have someone aware of others around them, and courteous, rather than obnoxiously and unconsciously loud and invasive in my space.  This is a crowded city.  And we are all on top of each other. We have to do the best we can to be respectful of each other.  It’s fishbowl living in LA.

  My neighbors are now having an apparently uproariously funny party right under my windows this evening.  I’ve explained a few times that when they are in their yard under my windows, they might as well be in my living room and office. Do they forget or just not care? Their patio, their right? 

I had neighbors in that same back cottage next door years ago who were members of a band. They would come home after a gig at 2 or 3am and play live music till dawn on work nights. That was a fun time. 🤨 

I tried to reason with them and they told me I was jealous because they had a social life and I didn’t. 😳 The only way I got them to finally stop was by leaving an anonymous note at their door, as if it was from a group of their neighbors. 

The note said, if you don’t stop playing live music all night, when you go to sleep at dawn, we are going to begin pounding pots and pans and screaming in front of your door.  Hey.  It worked. 😂 At least it got them to finally take the band and move out. 

These current tenants work in TV, not music.  The young woman in the couple just finished writing This Is Us.  No loud music.  Just loud voices and loud laughter.  They seem like a nice group of people.  I never saw the show, but I heard it was funny.  

So, maybe they are practicing their humor over there. My neighbor is a very sweet girl. She is just loud, has the worst and loudest jarring laugh, and seemingly has no boundaries.  She walks over into our back area to call her cat. Never asks.  Just trespasses.  I say nothing. Again, peace has its price.

And basically, I grew up in a party, so I don’t mind hearing laughter and cheerful babbling outside my windows.  My parents were party animals. 🤣 They had parties right under my bedroom windows on their back patio, too.  Voices and laughter were soothing white noise for me. I could sleep through most of that.  Hearing the warm, friendly voices outside, so close made me feel secure.  

But, when I want to work and don’t really know the people, it’s a tad tougher. I feel invaded.  I had to close my windows and now it’s hot in here.  The owners of the property moved out of their front house, and I thought it would be a lot more quiet.  

They were also from TV/film, and had movie screenings at night on their driveway with what sounded like a Dolby Sound system.  I texted him one night to ask if he could possibly lower the volume by one decibel, (you know like down to 10 from 11?), so I could hear my TV.  Apparently, he felt I was raining on his crowd pleasing parade over there. He texted back that when he hit the lottery he was buying our building and blowing it up.  🤣

He’s a prop master who works on huge projects, making many props at home in his garage studio.  And he restored his 1928 house himself, too. I was basically living in a construction zone daily for years, often with nightly parties, too. But, he is such a nice, generous, and helpful neighbor, (if you overlook the noise), I just coped as best I could. He even gave me a noise-canceling headset. It canceled nothing.  But, it was the thought that counted. I guess.  😬

Then he and his wife had two kids in a row.  To say the kids were loud is a huge understatement.  Nice kids, too, though. But, I don’t remember ever crying or screaming that much at their ages, or smashing things.  My dad, who didn’t allow us to impose on others, would have knocked me into the next week.  But, again, after they moved, I expected a lot of quiet.  So much for theory. This is noise pollution central. There are worse things.  🧐 All considered, I don’t live in Ukraine.

It’s now the next day.  I survived. I just turned up music, closed windows, put on fans, and then turned on TV and turned up its volume, too. I guess we all have our defense mechanisms to survive living in the city.  

Not much I can do about helicopters, sirens, loud muffler-less cars, etc.  The fireworks, as I mentioned in my last blog, were loud. But, it doesn’t seem like they went on as long as they have in previous years.  Maybe after all the upsetting SCOTUS rulings recently, people lost some of their glee for patriotism and exploding things? 

Jocosa Puella

July 10, 2022