You've Got to Be Kidding Me

It rained off and on most of yesterday afternoon once we got back from Cameron's tournament.  It finally cleared up enough for us to eat dinner outside and enjoy the rest of the evening in the backyard.  Once it started to get dark, Cameron set up the Wii on the projector so that he, Nick and Meg could play Swap Meet on the big screen.  It was fun to watch Flubbs, Millie and DKKoonga in larger than life size.  After they finished the game, Cameron headed in, but Doug, Meg, Nick and I began the live action movie Beauty and the Beast.

Doug made it through at least half of the movie before heading to bed.  He let me know that Cal and Hannah-Marie were out front.  They had returned form the drive-in movie theater in Plymouth where they watched Goonies.   Shortly after Doug fell asleep, Cal and HM joined us out back.  They wanted to let us know that the police had stopped by on a noise complaint.  He asked Cal if we were the house with the loud music as they couldn't hear anything.  Cal assumed that the neighbors called about the movie as we were using Nick's speakers so that he could hear it since the projector's volume was not that loud.  

After Cal informed us of their conversation with the police, we decided to go ahead and unplug the speakers and finish the rest of the movie with just the projector volume and the closed captioning on for Nick.  By the time Beast finished singing "Evermore" I was absolutely furious.  I would have had no problem turning down the volume on the movie if our neighbors had asked us first.  Calling the police was a joke.  We had actually just been talking to my parents about the loud parties, screaming children and booming fireworks that have occurred every weekend on our street.  Neighbors walk through our front yard constantly and dogs bark at us non-stop, even when we're just hanging out in the backyard.  This has been going on since April and as loud and annoying as it all has been, we have never once contemplated calling the police.  We knew that the most neighborly thing to do would be to talk with them first.  We  expected the same courtesy from those living around us.