Karma, Sometimes

At 4:15, I woke up to use the bathroom. At 4:30, a car alarm started going off outside my bedroom window. (I'm not suggesting a connection between the two events.) At 4:33, my upstairs neighbor jumped out of bed and clomped her way to her the front window, and then her apartment door, into the hall, and down the stairs. Sound of front door slamming. Of course I went to my window to see where she was going. Maybe she bought a car! What other explanation could there be for rushing out into the night toward a beeping car alarm? Was she planning on glaring at it until it shut up?

Apparently. She paced around it a few times, stood in the street and stared, and then came back inside. Amazingly, it worked, because as she was stomping up the stairs back to her apartment, the beeping stopped.

I still don't get what she expected to do out there. Confront the car's owner? At 4:30 am in a dark Brooklyn side street? Practically in front of the house with the trashy teenagers who I called the cops on once because they were going at each other with baseball bats and broken bottles? Did it ever cross her mind that the alarm went off because someone was maybe breaking into a car? Someone not so savory? (I know, I know, it's more likely it was a pigeon landing on its roof.)

Here's the irony: this same neighbor, who used to be a friend of mine, once berated me for asking her if she could maybe walk a little more quietly in the early mornings as she invariably wakes me up. Among other things, she told me that I need to be realistic about apartment life.

Is it mean of me to be secretly pleased at how annoyed she was at being torn out of bed this morning?

Good morning, dearie.