For nearly all my life, I have lived in a pretty nice area: lots of nice shops nearby, and the majority of our neighbors are little unassuming old ladies, so it’s usually pretty quiet around here too. However, by far the biggest downside is the fact that we’re rather close to a university campus that tends to attract rather unsavory students to the area. Most of the time the extent of the annoyance they cause is limited to taking up all the parking spaces in the vicinity of the area which is usually bad anyway because of all the shops. However, when I was about 2 a few rowdy ones were renting the house next door to us.
Despite repeated and polite requests from my Mom to keep the noise down, they frequently held loud parties at the weekends, a time particularly sacred to my parents since they are both teachers, and music also blared constantly from their rooms with the windows kindly left open so that all the neighbors could hear. It is noteworthy that their genre of choice was rap and hip-hop, not something my classically inclined mother is all that fond of.
Eventually, it became clear that they had no intention of shutting up and letting us live in peace, so my Mom decided to strike and return the favor with a vengeance! About 10 am one beautiful Saturday morning, she took the loudest speaker we had at home – a pretty sizable one given that she is a music teacher – placed it outside on the windowsill at full volume and left Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria shrieking for the pleasure of the students. I recommend a listen to anyone unacquainted with the piece – shrieking is the best way I can describe it. Oh, and she left it on repeat for over 2 hours.
We never had any problems with noise from them again.
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