Laura’s nineteen. Her laugh sounds exactly the same, every time. She’s crazy about a guy in Texas her friends call “Sexy Steve” and she drunk dials him just as soon as he’s awake a time zone away. She’s got a friend who almost spent the night on the beach last night — on his birthday — but she brought him over to party with the rest of her friends instead, and they really brought the roof down.

I know Laura’s friends obsess over “The Dark Knight,” especially the scene where the Lucius Fox quits working for Bruce Wayne over the unethical use of cell phone tech. I know Laura and her friends smoke. I’m pretty sure one of them has a crush on her because he tries to be with her when she goes outside to smoke and stays with her until she’s finished. That’s the birthday boy. He got really wasted but tried really hard all night to be clever.

I know all of this because Laura lives next door. Her patio / porch / balcony is about fifteen feet from my bedroom window. And last night Laura and her friends spent a lot of time on that patio, smoking and drinking and talking fortissimo as only teenagers fresh with independence and in the full bloom of their narcissism can do.

I know all of this because their fun woke me up at three AM last night. At three thirty, my downstairs neighbor opened her window and pleaded with them to keep it down; she had to wake up at six. They went inside for twenty minutes, where the first of many rounds of loud-as-we-can cheers and chants (for the birthday boy? Certainly led by him – his voice was as distinctive and grating as Laura’s laugh) began.

Then Laura had to smoke again, so at least three of them went back on the balcony. That’s when Laura called poor Sexy Steve, who, since it was just six or so where he was, might have been just waking up himself. That’s also when the Batman conversation between birthday boy (“I have Asian eyes.”) and his buddy happened. I waited for a lull in the conversation to say, from my bed, “People trying to sleep!”

Note that I didn’t have to yell to be heard, just project. There’s maybe twenty feet between where they stood and my head on the pillow, and everything’s amplified by the stucco walls of our apartment buildings.

There was a little flurry of talk between them, now sotto voce, or at least what passes for undertones when you’re seven sheets to the wind. “Who said that? What?”

I spoke up again. “It’s four in the morning. How many people have to tell you?”

Laura said she was sorry. Birthday boy mumbled, “One more, I guess.”

They went inside. More cheering. Lots of noise from just inside the patio sliding door. Someone — Laura? — kept shhhing people to no avail.

Have you ever noticed that “shhh” is one of the most knife-like sounds a human can make? The sound we make to request quiet is one of the best ways to wake someone up, or keep them up. It’s like a human cat hiss.

The last time I looked at the clock, it was four thirty. I was supposed to get up at seven so I’d be ready to meet some friends for coffee at nine thirty.

I woke up at nine thirty.

Thanks, Laura.

Dang Kids

I don’t often feel like there’s two decades between myself and “the young people.” There’s one thing that does set us apart for sure, though. One thing that denotes maturity… that’s an awareness and concern for others.

Did I have a similar disregard for the people outside of my immediate circle of celebration when I was that age? Of course I did. You know I did. Eventually, I got it through my head that there were other people in the world with concerns and appointments and lives that required them to get a decent amount of sleep, and that it wasn’t cool to interrupt that sleep and thereby disrupt their lives beyond that initial inconvenience.

There’s going to be a next time with Laura and her laugh and Sexy Steve and all the rest. You know there will.

Next time, I’m just calling the cops. I don’t want to be that guy, because I understand my neighbors and I remember and I know they’re building their history and stuff.

I don’t want to be that guy, but when it comes to Laura building her history and me building my future, guess who wins? Her soap opera can’t compete with mine. In fact, if it comes down to which one gets the ratings, I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure her show gets canceled.