Ov’rawed-teen

Everybody should have good neighbours. They should, but they don’t always get them. The house we’ve moved into has seven other apartments in it. The building is old and whilst that makes for quaint features like sloping dining room floors, it also means that the walls and floors are thin. Too thin. There is a family with two young kids in the flat above us and every night we hear them stomping on their hardwood floors. They must be trying to get their 10,000 steps a day in as they walk almost constantly up and down the hall. We know that kids have got a lot of energy and will jump around a lot but these kids must weigh a ton because they made the lightshades in our dining room rattle when they jump on the floor. Very annoying.

Things got worse at about 7pm tonight. Instead of the usual stomping we heard one of the children yelling. At first we couldn’t tell if he was yelling because he was over excited, but it was apparent that the yelling was because his father was telling him off (presumably because the kid was making too much noise!). The boy got louder and Sarah and I went to our front door to investigate as the noise so loud it sounded like the father was beating his son. We could hear kicking and punching on doors and swearing and screaming. I went up stairs and the father who was trying desperately to quieten the boy smiled a meek apology as if to say, “what can I do?”. I thought of suggesting giving the kid some Ovaltine (do you see what I did with the title?) to calm him down, but I guessed this wouldn’t have down too well. By this time the residents in the other apartments had come to investigate, even the guy who lives in the basement was disturbed by the noise.

Eventually, after an hour the kid stopped trying to rupture his own lungs. Unfortunately he went back to hallway stomping. I’d had a bad day at work and although Sarah and I had said we would phone the management company tomorrow, I’d had enough so I went upstairs again to complain. I knocked on the front door. No answer. I tried again as maybe they couldn’t hear me over the stomping. Still no answer. I tried a third time harder and again there was no answer, but I heard the father shushing his kids to be quiet so he didn’t have to answer the door! I couldn’t believe it. How could he think that I would believe nobody was home? I knocked louder a couple more times but it was obvious nobody was going to come to the door. At least it scared the kids for a while as they were quiet after that.

I’ve used my God given jurisdiction as President and Commander in Chief of Ottawaville to declare the kids to be part of the axis of evil. This means that they now have no rights in international law and I am obliged to imprison them without trial and to torture them for not respecting thou mother and father, which is akin to treason. I haven’t turned this into a Holy war yet, but I might as it will help my re-election at the end of the year.