Passing Judgment On Those I Have Never Met

Dear Upstairs Neighbour;

I feel the need to apologize. Without ever having met you I have found myself jumping to many conclusions, most of them negative, about you based on the many very annoying things I have witnessed over the past few months. The final conclusion I have drawn about you is that you are a family of uneducated red-necks who must have had some good luck at some dark VLT one night and decided to trade in your trailer for an apartment in the city and a sound system.

Ok, so I am not really apologizing, these conclusions are totally backed up by fact. I am just trying to be nice in the hopes that you will take the following suggestions under consideration:

1) Please keep in mind that I can hear you. The thing about these fancy apartment buildings in the city is that your neighbours are much closer than they were in the trailer park, so when you use that fancy new sound system to listen to the same Kid Rock song over and over again, or yell at your child causing him to stomp and slam doors, or yell at each other while stomping and slamming doors the people around you can hear it. Although I do have to give you props for being this annoying in a cement building, it’s much harder to get all of that sound through cement than it would be through wood and dry-wall.

2) It is not acceptable for your son to stand on the front lawn and yell at your window (the one right above mine) for you to let him in. If you really think that a 7 year old is old and wise enough to wonder the neighbourhood alone and unsupervised, then teaching him to use the buzzer shouldn’t be all that difficult. I know, intercom technology may be new and scary to you, but I promise that it is wonderfully convenient.
- Also, the next time I hear you tell him to go away and play a bit longer when he just wants to come in for a glass of water on a hot day, I am calling family services.

3) The window is not an appropriate garbage disposal. When you throw your fruit pits, cigarette butts, rotten eggs, and food wrappers off your balcony, they end up on my barbeque, in my tomato plants, and on the front lawn. I am sorry that you feel the giant garbage bin located at the back entrance is not convenient enough, or perhaps it’s the cost of garbage bags seeing as how you never leave and therefore couldn’t possibly have a job, but it’s not a suggestion, it is mandatory for you to bag and dispose of your garbage.

4) Do some laundry every once in a while. I have noticed on the laundry schedule that you have booked the 3 hour block of laundry time right before mine on Tuesdays. I am not really complaining that you have never used this time in the 6 months that I’ve had that laundry slot, it gives me the extra time I need to wash all of the new baby stuff we’re getting. But it does make me wonder. . . I mean, if you don’t care to dispose of your garbage properly, I can’t imagine what your other house keeping skills are like. I just hope you’re not growing anything up there that may become a health concern for others living in the building.

These are only a small few of the many things you do to make me judge you on a daily basis, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you. When you feel you have mastered these tasks I would be happy to give you another list of things you may want to consider.

Thank you for your time:

-pocket.buddha-

P.S. Please note that the noise and garbage complaints have been passed onto the building manager, and will probably only get worse should any of your obnoxious sound pollution wake my sleeping baby.