To our neighbor...

To our neighbor with 3 children under 12, who just knocked on our door to ask that we turn down our stereo. Okay, but what do you suggest I ask you to do the next time the screaming of your brats wakes me up at 7am on Saturday? As someone who seems less and less likely to have children, perhaps I'll just sound like an old crank when I say I've always wondered why parents of young children get a free pass. If I ran up and down the aisle of the airplane singing at the top of my lungs while other passengers were trying to sleep, and I refused to stop when politely asked, I'd be restrained by flight crew and arrested at the next airport. Flame-Haired Angel and I, living as we do in the close quarters of a Paris apartment, put up with screaming tantrums, hard-shoe hallway races, and decibel-defying door-slamming both above us and below us. Daily. Never, never, ever have we complained. This is not the pitter-patter of little feat. It is a hydraulic jackhammer on hardwood floors. Yet, tonight, at 10:45, we were asked to turn down our stereo so the little tykes could rest. Why must we subsidize the sonic peace of proximate parents, yet pay the penalty of being awoken at dawn every weekend? I have half a mind to introduce their daughters to ecstasy, rave parties, and guys who behave like I did when I was 17. I'll tell you what: You keep your kids quiet and I'll keep my stereo down. Fair deal? Oh, you can't control your kids? They express themselves spontaneously? Me too. But with AC fuckin' DC. ..