Mr. and Mrs. Crankypants

It’s 11:45 pm on Monday night. I’m dozing off. Then, I’m awake! Why? Because someone is apparently having a traumatic, extremely loud telephone breakup underneath my bedroom window.

I assume, as is my way, that it’s some hyperdramatic teenage girl bawling into her iPhone about some imagined slight. Because, as you know, kids are stupid. But my prediction is off. The ruckus comes from a fully grown woman, pacing up and down the alley behind my house, yelling loudly enough into her phone to keep me wide awake. 

And she doesn’t even have the courtesy to be articulate. I can’t understand a damn word she’s sobbing into her phone. If you’re going to keep me awake, at least be eaves droppable!

It would be one thing if she would move in a single direction. Sure, my neighbors and I would all be roused, but we could quickly drift back to sleep were it not for her circle back approach. It’s loud, it’s loud, it’s less loud, it’s even less loud, it’s quiet, it’s growing louder again, she’s screaming shaky voiced and weeping under my bedroom window again.

I hate to kick a sobbing woman when she’s down, but honestly, enough is efuckingnough. My next door neighbor has three kids under the age of 5. There’s a 4-year-old on the other side of the alley, a 4th grader next to him. Basically, her stomping and screaming ground runs back and forth outside the bedrooms of many, many sleeping kids and working parents.

Which has nothing to do with anything because, let’s be honest, I like my sleepytime and she is disrupting it.

So, I muster up my energy and send George out to deal with her.

“Hey, be quiet!” George hollers with noticeable sympathy out the window toward the pacing wailer.

“Fuck you! Oh, great! Fuck you!” she elegantly answers.

“Shut your mouth or I’ll call the cops,” he responds. Nice! That’s my honey bunch!

So two great things are accomplished this Monday night. One: I finally go to sleep. Two: we are officially the neighborhood’s “Hey you kids, get off my Goddamn lawn!” couple.