Senile Bitch

When I was in my late twenties, I rented a house next to a senile old woman who was sure that my roommates and I were up to no good, and she called the cops on us constantly for phantom complaints. The first time we ever saw her, she came over to complain about music being played – which was not being blasted by any means – it was just the stereo on at a normal volume. You could tell straight away that she was crazy, because

• A) there was no noise being generated at a volume that any reasonable person would complain about, particularly since it was about 6:00PM, and
• B) she was wearing a police vest over a night-dress.

…and then she started calling the cops on us. Now, a casual listener might be forgiven for assuming that we were actually noisy young people creating a nuisance, but we actually had the most sedate household you could possibly ask for.

Every time the cops came, they agreed that there was no nuisance noise being made, but implied that we must have turned it down because we anticipated them coming. We would come home from being out, and come around the corner to find this old lady in her night dress with her ear up against our window trying to see if she could hear anything. Crazy bitch.

Cops would show up, and we’d have conversations like “Well, she’s complaining because your music is audible to her when her window is open.” We’d stand between the houses and say “Well, yes, you can hear the music from inside. But you can also hear ambient birdsong. Which is louder?” “Well, yes, the birds are louder.” One time the cops came by on a Monday, and said, “Well, when we were here on the weekend, you turned everything down and wouldn’t even come to the door when we knocked.” “We weren’t even home over the weekend, we went to the Island for a music festival.”

This went on for a couple of months, with the cops showing up every few days. One day, the cops stood in our living room and I asked one of them how long they were going to keep coming, since it was plain that we were never making any unreasonable noise, and the old lady was clearly a crank. The cop said, “Between you and me, you should just move. Your neighbour has connections with the police, and we’re not going to offend her.” I said, “Thank you for that advice. See that mic stand? We’ve been making 24/7 reel-to-reel recordings here to document the disparity between the actual noise we make and her constant complaints, in preparation for the harassment suit against her. Looks like the police will be co-defending. Can you repeat your name and badge number, please?”

And that was the last time the police knocked on our door. Bitch.