Many years ago I had a young, single, female next-door neighbor who liked to party a bit. That wasn’t the issue, as I was also a young, single, female. The difference was I didn’t bring my revelry into our home because of my daughter.

One evening my neighbor had a gaggle of girlfriends over. No biggie. But they moved the party and music onto her patio. Our patios are in the rear and with the sliding doors open (no air conditioning) the sound came right into adjoining apartments. They might as well have been in my kitchen. The volume of the chat and laughter increased with the amount of alcohol consumed. It wasn’t late so calling the police would have been overkill but I clearly couldn’t enjoy my evening. So I put my stereo speakers in the kitchen and turned on some nice, classical music. Tchaikovsky, I think, maybe Swan Lake. I adjusted the volume to barely compete with their loud but boring pop and left home for an hour.

They were gone when I came back.