“Cracky” the upstairs neighbor

We lived in a nice apartment in Arizona; we love the complex, the neighbors. That is with the exception of, “Cracky” the upstairs neighbor. I think we were quiet people. My boyfriend and I were in bed by 8:30 pm usually because I taught school. We liked to get up early in the morning enjoy our coffee together before I would go to work.

We called the upstairs neighbor, “Cracky” because she was awake all day, then up all night. At night, she would have Spanish music blasting, stomping around, vacuuming, her kid would be crying; this noise was all night long. She would run the vacuum for hours in the middle of the night. Friday nights, her husband would come home then there was a make-shift schedule. They would go to bed at about two in the morning. Now, I had already spoken to “Cracky” about the noise at night. We had talked to management about the noise. We had even called the police. Damn, do we ever hate to call the police.

My boyfriend and I are early birds; we get up on Saturday mornings, clean and run errands. We are lovers of bagpipe music, also. We refused to break quiet hour rules; however, as soon as that clock struck 7:00 a.m. we cued the bagpipe music. We didn’t have a little stereo; we owned a ghetto trailer park system, that could be heard across the park set-up. We installed it in our bedroom, which is directly under their bedroom, closed the door to the room. We then went out on to the patio with a smirk of joy and drank our coffee.

The upstairs neighbor came flying down the stairs. He yelled at us, “Turn the f@#k shit off. People are trying to sleep.”

My boyfriend had a smile and a devilish twinkle in his eyes, “Well, good-morning sunshine. This is what we people call day time. That is when the sun is out. That...