Neighbors

(No, C & A, this is not about you, so you can relax!)

We just learned that two young men will be renting the rowhouse next door to us. The previous tenant was a very nice young woman who was rarely home and, thus, caused us no trouble whatsoever. Except when a 20-foot gutter fell from her house and the one on the other side of her and brought down our cable line, but then we could hardly blame her for that.

Several thoughts entered our mind on hearing the news that guys would be moving in, the first of which was that we needed to stock up on earplugs.

"You know they'll be loud!" I wailed to Joe. "Loud music, video games keeping us up at all hours of the night, wild parties on the patio...they probably won't go to bed until we're getting up!"

"Yeah, and probably a bunch of their loud friends will always be hanging out there," he said glumly.

"Why couldn't the owner rent to someone nice, like an 83-year-old grandma?" I said.

"Well, she would have a hard time getting up those steep stairs in the house," Joe said.

I shot him a don't-give-me-any-logic look.

"I'm sure they won't keep it up nicely," I sniffed. "They'll probably leave trash all over the place, have broken windows...do you think they'll be into drugs, too?"

Joe shrugged. "Guys like that, who knows? Drugs, gambling...could be all kinds of illegal stuff."

"Gambling too?" I squeaked. "I suppose the cops will be over there all the time."

We sat in silence, contemplating the chaos about to be unleashed on our formerly quiet neighborhood. I didn't feel safe anymore.

"Well, there goes the neighborhood," I sighed. "And it was such a nice place, too."

"Yeah," Joe agreed. "It's been a great year, but I guess we should think of selling and getting out while we can, before things really start going downhill."

Another neighbor sympathized but advised that it was too soon to panic. As she pointed out, the gentlemen in question might not be all that young; they might actually be retired for all we know, and interested only in quiet pursuits. Such as bird watching, perhaps.

One can only hope. In the meantime, I'm going to start looking for industrial-strength earplugs.