Neighbors.

I live in a townhouse row. I've been blessed with pretty remarkable neighbors over the years. Sometimes I wonder if I'm not the bad neighbor of the group since the locations that have the highest turnover rate are the spots on either side of me...

Actually, there was a terrible guy that lived next door for about a year. He was twenty-something, and apparently he moved in when his frat house decided he was too unclean and uncouth to stay there. He would come home late and turn up his video game system as loud as it would go until the walls shook. I actually had frames fall off the wall one night to the sound of rapid machine gun fire and explosions with him yelling, "Yes!" every few minutes. He would leave his screen door (with a totally functionable window and screen, mind you)open all the time, tied to the porch rails with fishing line. A bachelor's party left a blow-up sheep dressed in a french maid's costume on the front shrubbery. An unexpected snowfall inspired an anatomically-correct and very excited snow man on the front lawn that didn't melt for three weeks. My favorite, though, was the potato that made an appearance one spring morning on our shared porch. It sat there for two or three months until it rotted away to black globby nothing-ness. Freak. It was a joyous occasion when he finally snuck away in the middle of the night to avoid paying back rent owed.

Now, the neighbors are all fine people. In fact, most of them are really fantastic. The only trouble now is the boyfriend of a neighbor that comes to pick her up. He parks out front and waits for her, all the while listening to a car stereo that knows no limits, proving to all the world his "goes to eleven." You never know when the front of the house is going to turn into a booming ghetto disco. Noon on Sunday and the walls are throbbing, the beat is bumping, the joint is jumping and everyone is dancing along wildly to "Can't Wait to Fuck You Up Against the Wall."