A lot of us are still working from home these days, which means that we need to be able to focus, right? But a lot of kids are also spending plenty of time at home these days, whether or not they’re enrolled in distance learning at school. One woman recently found herself in a bit of a sticky spot: The young children who live in the apartments around hers have started playing against her windows, even peeking inside her apartment throughout the day.
The woman admits that the kids are young, generally between the ages of 4 and 7. She’s also tried asking their mom if they can play somewhere else, but nothing has changed. So she recently took rather drastic action to get the kids to move away from her home.
"I live on the first floor of an apartment building and I have CONSTANTLY been yelling at the local kids (like between 4 and 7 years old) to stop playing against my new windows. I work from home, and they're just always out there playing in the grass between the buildings, which I don't care about."
She says it's one thing for the kids to play nearby, but when they play against her windows she gets angry.
"But then they'll all gather in the bark mulch in front of my windows, lean against my screens and peek into my apartment. Mom is always out there with them, always on her phone and drinking a White Claw. I've yelled at her, yelled at the kids, and still they're against my windows this afternoon."
She got so sick of her reasonable request being ignored that she decided to treat the kids and their mom to a little musical entertainment.
"So I played Cardi B's 'WAP' at absolute full volume. I have a pretty decent sound system on my computer, so it was very clear, very loud."
If you're unfamiliar with the song, let's just say… the lyrics are quite wild! The kid's mom definitely had a big reaction.
"Mom runs over, grabs all the kids, and demands I turn it down. I said I'll keep it at a reasonable volume that they can't hear if they're four or five feet away from my windows. She said I could have just asked (I have), and she's threatening to call the cops (good [expletive] luck, lady)."
But now, the woman says she kind of regrets her choice of song.
"But part of me is feeling bad now. I could have just blasted unintelligible metal music or something. I intentionally chose the most sexually charged song I could think of just to get the kids to ask mom about it, and to intentionally get a rise out of mom."
She's also asked Reddit if she was the real jerk in the situation after all.
Predictably, people were incredibly entertained by the entire story. They also had suggestions for other songs the woman could try.
"You could have played Korn's 'Right Now.' I did that to a rude neighbor twice. He would blast his music that was in his garage at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. So I went out into my truck opened the doors and cranked that song up. My driveway was across from his so when the doors were open, the music went back right to him. He turned it down after a few minutes. When he did it again, I played the song again. He never did it after that. WITA? Maybe, but it was justified. Don't mess with people's sleep."
Others related their own similar experiences.
"I used to have a neighbor who would sit there and watch her kids smack my bird feeder around and peek in my window. I asked them to stop/ her to not let her kids do this. Thankfully they didn't live there long. Frankly I'm going to keep this trick in mind should another neighbor act that way."
In fact, most of the responses were from people who have similarly used music to get back at their own frustrating neighbors.
"I had neighbors on the opposite wall of my bathroom (read: loud acoustics) play music at like one in the morning. So I played one of the classics for their enjoyment: Macarena.
It got quiet after that.”
"I once had to ask the girls on the other side of my wall in my freshman dorm to turn their music down. Normally, I didn't give a [expletive], but I had a really bad headache (I'd almost gotten hurt in a car accident and though I was okay, the post-adrenaline reaction left me shaky with the killer headache). The bass beat of their music was killing me, since my bed was against our shared wall, and I stressed that it was really a one-time thing. They said they would, but it lasted about 5 minutes before they turned the music up again.
I could have gone back and complained, but instead, I just turned the speakers on my little stereo into the wall (this was the 80’s, those were a thing 😉 ), and then blasted the first 60 seconds of the Overture to ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ into our shared wall.
By the time I turned it off, their music had gone back down to a regular level and stayed there. Sometimes, you just gotta let the music do the talking.”
One person pointed out that the kids probably didn't even know what the words of the song meant, but their mom sure did.
"I have children those ages. There is no good reason for that age range to know what any of the lyrics mean. I would be absolutely appalled if they do. Don't even give that a second thought. That was a clear message to mom, and it worked. I approve and find it hilarious. So does my husband."
Ultimately, most people agree: The kids should absolutely have a place to play, but their mom needs to make sure it's not right up on the homes of their neighbors.
"Kids are wonderful, but when they aren't yours you shouldn’t have to deal with them. The mother needs to pay better attention to her kids. You shouldn’t have to ask multiple times. Kids won't understand that, but the mother is an adult and it's HER responsibility to remind them to play elsewhere."
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
