I live in a pretty crowded, though quiet, neighborhood.  There are houses in every direction for as far as the eye can see (the eye can't see very far because of trees and hills), but there really isn't much noise besides barking dogs, weekend power tools, and the occasional beer-B-Q.  That all changed when the Bad Neighbors moved in next door.  The Bad Neighbors consisted of a single mom and her teenage daughter and 20-something son.  I don't hate people in general, and I didn't dislike these new neighbors as human beings.  But they did a few things that annoyed me, to say the least.  Here are three such things: 
  1. The truck.  The 20-something son had a friend that lived just up the street.  This friend drove a big pickup truck which conveniently was missing an exhaust system.  Oh, and I live on a hill.  So every night at exactly 10:40pm, the friend would drop the son off at the house, then gun his exhaustless truck up the hill past our house, such that the cats freaked out and the windows rattled.  I actually talked to the friend one night when his truck was parked in front of my house, and he was a really nice guy.  He said he hated his truck and how loud it was, but he couldn't afford to get it fixed at the moment.  I appreciated the sentiment, but actions speak exhaustlessly louder than words, my friend.
  2. The drunken parties.  I'm not opposed to drunken parties, per se.  But I am opposed to drunken parties on Tuesday nights (which happened more than once), and drunken parties that involve drunken yell-fights (there was literally a 20-minute segment of "What did you say about my mom?") and drunken cars towed from in front of my house in the middle of the drunken night.  There are two types of people in the world:  The kind who get drunk and wind up in jail, and the kind who don't.  The Bad Neighbors were the former.
  3. The Johnny Cash.  One fateful Saturday afternoon, the neighbors decided to put on a little Johnny Cash.  And they decided to crank it.  I can't think of a worse style of music to crank.  Also, I despise Johnny Cash and his ridiculous music.  Regardless, it was a warm, sunny Saturday afternoon, and people have the right to blast their music, whether it's Johnny Cash, Beethoven, or AC/DC.  But at about 10pm, I started to get worried.  At this point, Wendy, also an avid Cash-hater, had ripped her ears off her head and was foaming at the mouth.  I waited until about 11pm, then I went over to see if I could have a friendly discussion.  I got to the front door of the neighbor's house, and noticed through their screen door that there was no one visibly in the house, and the stereo was just sitting in the living room, turned up to full volume, blasting this nonsensical country folk crap.  I peered through some windows to see if anyone was even home, and then I had a frightening thought:  They might be dead.  Why else would anyone blast Johnny Cash for a full 12 hours?  So I knocked on the door.  No answer.  I waited for a break in between songs, then knocked again, this time harder.  No answer.  I pounded a few more times and yelled, "Hello?"  At this point, I was convinced there were corpses in the house, so I went back home and called the cops.  After a few minutes a cop showed up and did the same things I did, but then walked around back and knocked on a different door.  This time someone answered, and yadda yadda, no more Johnny Cash.  Also, quite possibly a court date.
About a year ago, at night, the exhaustless truck was idling loudly in the neighbor's driveway with his lights shining on an old car which they were attempting to fix.  This had been going on for a while, so I decided to take a stroll over there to see if I could convince these intelligent gentlemen to attempt their car repairs in the daylight.  In a non-confrontational manner, I started with some small talk before asking them what they were up to.  They answered that they were moving out of the house and were trying to get the car started so they could move it to the new place.  I just about peed my pants.  I excitedly walked back home and announced to Wendy that our Bad Neighbors were leaving, and since then, we've seriously considered buying the property next to us and tearing the house down so there would be no chance of having bad neighbors again. #sociology