It Was A Man Cat Fight!

We currently rent a house with a basement apartment. Several people have come and gone from that little two bedroom abode, and I like to think that it's because they grow tired of living in the shadow of our greatness. (Other possibilities include new jobs, buying a house, witness relocation, and really annoying neighbors. But not us, of course.)

Our most recent inhabitants are a couple with a small child, and from the moment they first pounded on their ceiling, (our floor), to tell us to be quiet, we knew there were going to be issues.

We have hard wood floors and four boys. There's going to be some noise, and there's only so much I can do about it. Welcome to the bottom floor, People.

We've never had any problems with any of the other basement dwellers. No noise complaints, no dead body hidden in the closet kind of smells, no obnoxious polka music, etc. But these people have kinda had daggers for us from the get-go.

Yesterday I was sitting on the living room floor and going through a giant stack of homeschool curriculum while Drew watched cartoons and Trent pushed his ride-on toy from one end of the room to the other. He crashed into the wall a time or two, but I was too engrossed in second grade math workbooks to think much of it...

...Until three violent explosions rocketed my backside into vibrate mode. The guy downstairs was pounding on the ceiling - AGAIN! It irritated the crap out of me because he was essentially saying that my kid cannot play with the toy he wants to play with at two thirty in the afternoon! Lighten up, right?

But the really infuriating part was the way he handled it. He pounded on the floor like a gorilla-child instead of just coming upstairs, knocking on my door in proper grown-up fashion and asking me to keep it down a little. That approach would have been just fine.

After the pounding stopped and I had finished my deep breathing exercise, I took Trent's toy away and did my best to keep everyone quiet for the rest of the day. But first I called Andrew and told him how annoyed I was. Andrew didn't have much to say about it - just listened with a few well timed "uh-huh"'s and we all moved on.

But when Andrew got home last night, he did not come in the house - he went downstairs and knocked on the door.

When I realized what he was doing, my armpits started to prickle with that nervous sweat and my heart pounded so hard I almost couldn't hear what was going on.

I held my breath and listened to the exchange: (if I may paraphrase)

Andrew: I heard there was an issue today with the noise?

Dude: Yeah, well, when they're rolling the toys all over the floor...

Andrew: So that's how you're going to handle it? Pound on the ceiling?

Dude: This conversation is over. (Forcefully shuts door.)

And then!

And then the real drama began!

Andrew decided in that instant of door being shut on the conversation, that he would play along. He turned around and pounded his tree-trunk legs up every one of the stairs as hard as he could, walked into our house, across the kitchen and into the living room, attempting to put his foot straight through the floor with every. single. step.

I went into full on panic mode, trying to calm him down. "Andrew! Stop it!", I hissed at him with no effect whatsoever. There was steam coming from his beet-red ears and our four noisy boys simply stared in shock.

Andrew sat down on the couch and turned on ESPN and said not a word until I came in to ask him where we were going to move.

We discussed the pros and cons of several new living arrangements for a while, Ethan sat at the table in solemn angst and asked me if we were going to get kicked out that night or if we could pack our things first, and Cameron, for once, felt the tension in the air and didn't prance about the room chanting random phrases about peace and war.

Then came the knock at the door.

Andrew looked at me expectantly and I shook my head, "Oh, no! This is your fight, I am so not opening that door."

It kinda surprised me that he didn't ignore it.

I hid in the living room while Andrew opened the back door and looked into the face of the man he had just beaten in a contest of childish rants.

And Dude apologized!

It's amazing how fast men can suck up an incident and move on. They shook hands and went back to their sports.

Passing me on his way back to the couch and his NB playoff game, Andrew said, "That took balls."

So now I guess it's nothin' but respect for the Dude in the basement, but I will still be in hiding for at least the duration of the weekend.