Neighbors have a new windchime-thing on their back porch. It’s not far from my window. It’s a pentatonic scale, but it’s made out of some kind of wood, so it sounds like a very primitive xylophone. Actually, as pentatonic chimes often do, it mostly plays the two lowest notes. Over and over and over and over and overandoverandov…
It is damned noisy all day long where I live, and it only gets any kind of halfway quiet at night. I mean, it used to.
Would it be ridiculous for me to ask them to take it down at night? Would you think your neighbor was an uptight anal PITA if they asked you such a thing?
P.S. I tried to picture skeletons dancing whenever I hear the xylophone sound – but as much as I love skeletons, it still didn’t seem to help.
for some people it might be hard to take a chime down for the night and so they are unwilling. a solution for them is to tie a cord or something around the chime.
I wouldn’t call the theft of an offending item asshattery. It would fit under “not-yet-justified”
If they refuse a polite and non-confrontational request, it would become justified.
Asshattery would be waiting until one of their heads in just below it before blasting the thing with a .410.
go out in the middle of the night and pick a couple of the chimes and sand a little bit off the bottom.
repeat until they notice that it’s not in tune any more.
suggest to them that it went out of tune because it was exposed to the weather too much and either dried out or absorbed water, depending on the climate.
neighbors will then go purchase metal pentatonic chimes with tubular bells that are slightly less noisy than the Bells of St. Mary’s.
It’s a not an unfair request, it would probably be easier for them to put a rubber band around it than take it down. If you do a little googling, you’ll find all kinds of complaints about chimes.
Buy some Girl Guide cookies or some other polite little token of good will, then go over there and politely make your request (you might even give them the cookies first, then explain yourself) like “and look… I really don’t want this to be ‘one of those things’ so I brought you some cookies, just to try to make it a little… you know… less like ‘that’ because it’s not like ‘that’… so do you think you might possibly be able to tie them up at night?”
Then pretty much anyone cool at all themselves will say yes, of course! (and a significant portion of jerks will be caught unaware and checkmated).
Then you can even produce that nice piece of twine or ribbon from your pocket (bonus if you get something that looks nice with the wind chimes) you brought in case they needed something. You can act a bit embarassed & sheepish about having brought it, but you had it, so you thought why not, just in case it was needed.
I’m not saying you owe them cookies for this, or anything, honestly I think you’re more in the “right”… but that’s not the point here. The point is no more noise & no bad neighborly vibes.
The sucky thing is that if they don’t take them down/tie them up every night because they’re assholes or they just forget (and who would do that every night? are they that into wind chimes that it’s worth it to do that just to have them up in the day?) and you do eventually have to steal them, they’ll know it was you.
Wait till they are out, go over and wrap some appropriately coloured elastics around the individual parts. They probably won’t even notice. If and when they do, they are likely to come to the conclusion they are bothering someone who is too polite to say anything.
But first I’d ask. Mostly because this is the kind of item that people and kids give to older people sometimes. And then they kinda hafta put them up. Yet might dearly love an excuse to get rid of them. It’s always a possibility, I’m just saying.
Well, a young couple, anyway. Actually, the same thing occurred to me, that perhaps they were a gift. (Because, yannow, who would put up with that on purpose?)
Thanks for the sanity check, everyone. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t being, err, some kind of messed-up.
Sorry to be a spoilsport,but…:
Ya wanna know who would put up with that on purpose? Well, I’ll tell ya: your neighbors.
You see, if they didn’t actually, positively, frickin enjoy the damn chimes, then they would have already put a rubber band around 'em . Even if it’s a wedding gift which the young couple is embarrassed not to display prominently—they could easily display it without having to listen to it.
So the only conclusion you can draw is that , as per the title of this thread, it is your neighbors who are the asshats --subjecting you to their musical tastes, just like an obnoxious teenager next door with an electric guitar and a drumset.
They may be doing it unintentionally, and they may be wonderfully nice people who will happily submit to your request to remove the chimes. Or they may be freaks who think that wind chimes are nature’s way of setting our souls free. ([singing] * born free…as free as the wind blows …*[/singing] )
So you don’t have much choice. Speak to them nicely, and hope it ends well.
But if not, well…then they will know who to suspect when a squirrel accidently chews through the string supporting the chimes, and they fall down and shatter on the ground.
(–advice from chappachula, whose neighbors have a goddamn, fricking wind chime 30 feet from his bedroom window. But, thankfully, and glory be to Og himself, they only take the rubber band off it on weekend afternoons when the grandkids come to visit.)
Just ask in a friendly way. If I were your neighbour, I wouldn’t mind this at all. However, I would be annoyed if went and wrapped it in something sneakily.
No asshattery, but I do firmly believe that your first interaction with the neighbors should not be a complaint. If you haven’t already, introduce yourself and make small talk a few times before bringing up the windchimes.
Some people love windchimes. Sane people understand that they are the tools of the devil and gradually take over your brain until all you can think of is the sounds, the SOUNDS.
