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I Can't Stand My Neighbor
He hits the ceiling with a wood broom. He watches behind the peephole and listens to everything as if he is paid, undercover spy. He lets his dog howl at the moon. There are tiny flies hovering around smelly trash bags by his window. With all of these things, it is enough to ruin my daily life at 'home sweet home'.
Neighbors! The most bizarre case that I remember from my own personal experience is the one with a kid who, every single day, would make countless paper airplanes and throw them with amazing precision at the window of an old single woman that lived just above me in the building. The kid was not more than ten years old and the perfect example of the devil. At times, I would run into his mother in the elevator and the kid would make it a point to always step on my Nikes or press the red alarm elevator button or, oddly enough, he would touch one of his mothers' breasts.
Another thing that he did, I recall, was to go to the terrace with a small mirror and spend a great deal of time redirecting the suns' rays to bother his chosen victims. One day I got completely fed up with his shenanigans. What happened was that he began to ring the doorbell of my apartment, then run away afterwards. One morning I went to go speak to his mother and she apologized for him with such talent that I thought she must have had experience doing this before.
As I lived in the neighborhood, I witnessed many neighbors who did a terrific job in annoying me and others. There was an obsessive drummer. I heard the over-exaggerated screams of a woman about to have an orgasm. I ran into inexperienced hairdresser that spoke in at full volume to all of his clients. But the worst neighbor that I came in contact with was this old man that harassed me for the single fact that I parked my bicycle in the hallway. One night he left his apartment with a knife and slashed my two tires. I tried to talk about it with him and reconciliate, but nothing came of it. He did not even let me watch Susana Gimenez that night on television. He began to hit the ceiling with a wooden stick or something. He would do the same thing when I would turn on the radio in the morning while I was taking a shower.
Is there a Valium Around?
A friend of mine Beatriz is 34 years old and she has a neighbor with a Siberian dog that spends the day howling in complete solitude. One day the neighbor threw him a valium which was lodged in a piece of meat. Awhile later, the dogcould not be heard for several hours.
The war between neighbors is eternal and, at times, severe. The neighbors of my colleague Marcelo had put fourteen cockroaches beneath his door (he counted them one-by-one, he explained) as a punishment for a loud party he had hosted on a random Saturday night.
I read in the newspaper that one crazy guy shot and killed a kid because he had been playing ball and broke the window. Roman, another friend of mine, told me about his nutty neighbor who threw his bags of trash from the window of his third-story duplex every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
The Consensus
I can't stand my neighborsÙ One of them listens to Silvio Rodriguez, Mercedes Sosa, Leon Gieco and now I don't know who else. I believe that they buy all the CDs that come cheap from the tabloids. A little farther away, there is a couple that argues over every little thing. The other day I heard the following dialogue:
'The dog peed on the plants again!... Well, you are not going to say anything?'
'You know what? It's your fault. And do you know why? Because you let her do it, let her do it, and let her do it!'
I can no longer imagine the classic scene of a neighbor giving another a cup of sugar with a smile or letting them borrow the telephone to make a call. If I didn't know better, I would think that my neighbors conpsire in the shadows against me just to make my life more difficult. Maybe they even follow me?
Everything Begins with noise
- A recent study put together by the Buenos Aires City Government affirms that at the top of the list of complaints regarding neighbors usually revolve around 'noise'. The high music volume, dogs barking, or the sound of a loud drum.
- The dogs that bark seem to take the blame for everything. Almost half of the complaints that are received have to do with dogs barking. Next on the list are shouts/screams: Screams of love, screams of hatred, or just screaming in general. Third, radios and televisions that are on at all hours of the day are the reason for many complaints.
- 52% of the total of neighborhood arguments originate from less obvious things: Degenerates that watch girls from the window, bicycles parked in the corridors, the odor of steak at midday and things of that nature.
- A smaller percentage of problems come from the noise emanating from cybercafÌs, cafes, motels with hourly rates, prostitute zones, and dance clubs.
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Buenos Aires Blogs
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