Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Wooden Shoe People

Because I use a Mac, for some reason the hyperlink function is not available to me. So I can't link you to my friend Seriouslyemily.blogspot.com's page when I say she has inspired this morning's post. Poor Emily suffers from what I call Wooden Shoe neighbors. I coined this term my junior year of college, when the people who lived upstairs could not have possibly worn anything but that clunky Dutch footwear to stomp around their apartment.

I used to lie away in bed, elbowing Corey in the ribs to see if he could hear the stomping, the noise, the screaming. They were so effing loud just remembering it makes me upset. I was certain they were moving furniture up there all the time. I passive-aggressively suffered through the noise for months until one night before a rugby game. Don't EVEN keep me up late the night before a rugby game when I am trying to mentally prepare and get enough rest. I have called the police on prank phone callers who disturb me after 9pm.

So the WSP were just getting going around that time. I lay awake, certain they were kidding and would eventually stop. It got louder and louder. There were no explanations for what they could be doing. I boiled in rage and threw on a bathrobe. I marched up the stairs and pounded on their door. They knocked back at me. This made me so much more angry I couldn't see.

I pounded. They pounded. Giggling. They opened the door and everything became immediately clear to me. I stopped hating and started laughing, though I still wished they would stop.

They had removed all the furniture from their living room (Perhaps dragged it down the hallway?) and constructed a skateboard halfpipe. They were skateboarders. Banned from the sidewalks and bus stops outside, they were doing flips and tricks in the living room. No wooden shoes. Hard rubber wheels.

I asked them nicely if they could just be a little more quiet. They offered me a joint. I scuttled back downstairs to laugh miserably in bed while the skating continued above me until I moved out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Katy that is too funny. Skateboarding inside. Classic.

My party was appearently a theme party "Through the Decades". We moved from Can't Touch This to Jump Around to Hips Don't Lie. I considered knocking on their door, but that would have required putting on clothes, so I opted to put a pillow over my head intead.

freya said...

as someone who has lived both under and over people, i have this to say:
1) i cannot believe there was actually skateboarding going on. that's amazing. i've been convinced that people were bowling above me, but i don't really think i believed that deep down inside.
2) i have been accused of moving furniture at 10pm. my downstair neighbor came upstairs and accused us of moving furniture. when it became apparent that she was a raving lunatic, she asked us to "walk more quietly". sucks to live downstairs from people with hardwood floors, but c'mon. i've dealt with it, and she should too. without being crazy.