Milwaukee, WI

I had a close encounter with extreme rudeness last night.

I live very close to a tavern in Bay View. Even though the tavern is usually pretty busy and often features live music, my street is primarily residential and remains surprisingly quiet as the bar patrons are usually impressively well-behaved.

Until last night.

At 12:30 a.m. I was attempting to get some sleep when this horrible rhythmic sound shook my second floor bedroom windows. In my sleepy state, it took me a moment to discern what was going on, but I realized quickly that it was a car stereo being played very loudly. That’s not so unusual. Occasionally a car with a loud stereo will drive down Kinnickinnic, but the offensive noise usually passes fairly quickly.

But not this time.

The pounding and window rattling was incessant. Ridiculously incessant. It went on for a good ten minutes before I couldn’t stand it any longer. I looked out the window and saw that the offending car was parked directly in front of my house, right below my bedroom windows.

Kids, I assumed. Stupid, drunk kids. I was feeling might old as we tried to determine what to bring with us to tell those kids to get off of my lawn. Flashlight? Baseball bat? Stun gun? Air horn?

Heh. Air horn. Totally. That will scare them.

We went outside to give the damn kids the universal sign for “turn your terrible music down, you inconsiderate twits” and were surprised at what we saw.

This wasn’t a bunch of kids who were too young to know common courtesy. It wasn’t some drunk college guys out having a good time. It was an older couple. Not exactly elderly, but a far cry from the frat boys we expected to find.

My point is that they were certainly old enough to know better.

People: it is great that you like your music. I’m glad you have something in your life that brings you such pleasure that you are willing to risk injury to your hearing over it. It is just fan-damn-tastic that you even like your music so much that you feel you should share it with those around you by blasting it forth from your vehicle whenever you can. But playing your loud music in a primarily residential neighborhood in the middle of the night on a weeknight? Love of music or not, that’s just plain rude.