After another
sleepless night full of blissful noding, I was awakened at 2pm
today by the sound of someone dribbling a
basketball on my front door.
As I regained consciousness, it occurred to me that, since my front door is a vertical plane, it would be very difficult to unintentionally dribble a basketball on it. I got up to investigate.
Peering through the peephole and squinting in the bright light, I saw the little girl from the apartment above mine. My apartment is on the bottom level and you actually have to walk down some steps to reach my door. She was rolling a ball down the steps, bouncing it off my door in such a way that it then flew back over the steps and into her arms.
I wasn't really sure what to do. She's a nice little kid, and I like kids, so I didn't want to go out and tell her to stop at the risk of making her think of me as the bad man in the downstairs apartment. On the other hand, the racket was tremendous and it was driving me nuts.
I tried to ignore it. Over the course of an hour or so, she eventually stopped. Then, fifteen minutes later, she started again, did it for another hour, and stopped. This cycle repeated itself several times. I was beginning to get a headache, so I finally decided I had to do something.
I waited by the door, watching through the peephole. Eventually, she bounced the ball with too little force, and it didn't make it all the way up the stairs. The ball rolled down and came to rest against my door. She jumped happily down the stairs to retrieve it. I readied myself. Just as she picked up the ball from in front of my door, I punched the door as hard as I could, making a tremendous noise.
The poor little girl must've jumped five feet straight up. She grabbed her ball and ran to the top of the stairs, turned, and stared at my door for a minute. Then she ran up the next flight of stairs and into her parents' apartment. It's been blissfully quiet ever since.
Ahhhhhh....