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“Let me talk!” screams a male voice at the top of his lungs. Sadly, I am distracted from my homework by a domestic dispute coming from the wall attached to my bedroom. Am I annoyed? Yes. Should I call the cops? Probably not.
After nearly an hour of yelling I hear silence and then the banging begins. I can only assume that the headboard to my neighbor’s bed is positioned adjacent to my wall. I then officially vow never to live in an apartment complex again.
Throughout the year, I have been blessed with a neighbor’s blaring music on repeat, obnoxious pounding on walls, a nasty divorce and a 2 a.m. party on a Tuesday.
More recently, I woke up to aggressive pounding on my door. Worried that someone was seriously injured or dead, I dragged my nearly lifeless, sleep-deprived body out from my cozy down comforter and squinted through the peephole. I saw a blurry figure and unlocked my apartment door.
My neighbor stood angrily in front of me and requested that I turn my music down…I wasn’t playing any music! It was 6:30 a.m. on Saturday. I wanted to kill her.
It took me a few moments, but I eventually realized that my apartment sounded like a country music festival. My housemate’s battery-operated alarm, which over time I have learned to ignore, was blasting for the whole complex to hear. I hate country music and desperately wanted to turn it off, but my out-of-town housemate locked her door when she left. I apologized to my neighbor and watched as she stormed off to her apartment.
I slammed the door shut, grabbed my tool kit from the hall closet and attempted to pry her door handle open until my hands hurt. Thirty minutes and countless failed MacGyver-style break-ins later, I finally called the police and asked if someone could kick down her door. I couldn’t get anyone to drop kick her door, but eventually a Bank of America Visa card saved my sanity by finally helping me jimmy open the door. Without my neighbor’s incessant pounding, I would have slept until the damn thing ran out of batteries.
However, I soon realized that I am not the only one with apartment woes.
Like clockwork, my friend Brendan receives pleasantly colored sticky notes on his door reminding him that the walls in his off-campus townhome complex are paper thin and he should turn the music down. I once met this Post-it-sticking vixen at 10 on a Saturday night. She walked to the door in a puffy snow jacket and tapped her foot as she angrily suggested that his “music sucks,” and asked if it could “not be blasted all the time.”
I understand that close-proximity living is never easy, but in a college town, sharing a wall or two with complete strangers escalates this problem into unbearable living situations. Mix a bunch of wild and rambunctious young adults with others who prefer quiet nights, and there will be guaranteed problems. I don’t want to have to worry about bothering my neighbors with my lifestyle and music preferences and I most definitely don’t want to deal with theirs. If my neighbors are having sex, I don’t want to hear it through my living room walls.
I’m moving out of my apartment in May and am getting ready to sign a lease to a nice four-bedroom house. The neighbors won’t share any walls with us, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Contact CU Independent Assistant Entertainment Editor Elise Puritz at Elizabeth.puritz@colorado.edu.
