an anecdote about noise and tolerance

tressa and i are blessed with a downstairs neighbour who complains about the noise we make. this would be fine, if we were making noise.

at first we thought that it was legit complaints on account of me moving in, shuffling furniture, doing some assembly, etc. turns out that the only part of these complaints that was genuine was the 'whine'...wah-wah

the downstairs tenant introduced himself by saying something like "hey i'm not a douchebag". and when someone says that, you can be pretty confident that they are a full fledged douchebag. despite the condo really being a converted apartment building with wood floors - something i and the superintendant have mentioned, he called tressa and i elephants.

a couple days later there was a hallway confrontation where he complained about noise from days that we were practically not in the condo all evening. another complaint occurred when my sixty year old parents, tressa and i visited and played a scrabble-like game and watch curling. (we're pretty wild).

the irony is tressa and i are quiet for the most part (she does stomp around like an elephant sometimes ; ), we hear the complainer and his girlfriend fight daily (for the girlfriend think shrieky from the carebears. the reason i am blogging right now is because their 'boof boof boof' bass is giving me a headache.

i have lived in various shared environs for almost ten years and never had a noise complaint, despite playing guitar (like a phenom i might add...)

if we are elephants, than the people above us sound like stampeding elephants. i have not thought about complaining. nothing to gain. i did so once in my life - my first apartment, ten years ago. the woman above me weighed about 300lbs and i lost sleep to the rhinocerous constantly shuffling. one day i got the nerve to go up and ask if she could be quieter. i received the sentence "no. it's the floor" and she shut the door.

lessons learned. one - you have to live your life, do not tippy toe around for others.

lesson two - do not anger the people who live above you - it is much easier for them to make you hear them than for you to try to annoy them.

i have received various great pieces of personal advice and anecdotes from people who had similar situations. "...if they were loud on friday night, then saturday morning i would put my speakers face down on the floor with the treble turned zero, bass full up and megadeth pumping and grab a hammer in each hand and start whaling on the floor..." to "my downstairs neighbor always complained. and i'm not a big guy. i'm not 500 lbs (this fellow is probably about a buck ten - 110lbs)... so i'd come home from the bar at 3am and start jumping up and down on the floor and yelling (expletives) ..."

while we have not done these extreme methods or tried to be loud we definitely could. the subwoofer has not been hooked up out of courtesy. i have played guitar only a couple of times so far in my new environ. we have yet to play rock band in all our singing glory.

stay tuned....