I had been working graveyard, and the pounding on the walls as my neighbors contractor built his recording studio in the next apartment had kept me awake for days. It was brutally hot, and the boom boom BOOM was giving me that special kind of exhausted, sweaty rage that seems to push the back of your eyeballs in. For some reason, I got the idea to grab a hammer and pound on the other side of the wall he was putting nails into, in time to his rythmic pounding. Exhaustion and discomfort had clearly made me punchy, but I spent the next half hour, pounding on the other side of the wall in time with him, affecting the sound of his pounding just enough to make him wonder if he was imagining things. I made his steady boom boom BOOM turn into BOOM boom BOOM or BOOM BOOM BOOM at odd intervals. His steady, rhythmic pace started pausing, and my previous rage was transformed into an almost hysterical giggling, imagining him on the other side of the wall, hot, sweaty and trying to figure out why his sounds of labor, the familiar sounds he had made for years, were now suddenly different. I heard a boom boom squish followed by a muffled yell and I realized he had hit his thumb. By this point, I am in tears, so when he starts pounding the next nail, I miss the beat badly on purpose, and hears the boom(boom) boom(boom) boom(boom) and stops for a long moment, then: BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM! To which I reply boom boom boom... And you could HEAR his roar of laughter clearly through the wall. Turns out- he was a Kiwi, about 68 of tattooed muscle and I was most genuinely glad when he shook my hand, smiled and bought me a beer when we finally laid eyes on a each other when I ran into him with my neighbor at the local bar. From what I could gather by what he said, it had been a brutal construction job because of the heat, and my prank had cheered him up. Would NOT have wanted to see him not cheerful with me... Kiwis are all right by me. Hope to see their country one day. Seems like a Fine Place
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 21:38:41 +0000
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