Sally Breslin: My Life: ALL I WANT IS SOME PEACE AND QUIET

Every time I mention to someone that I’m tired of having to devote so much time to the upkeep of my house, I hear, “Well, maybe it’s time you sold your house and moved into a condo.”

It does sound tempting not to have to worry about any type of yard work again, but the truth is, I enjoy my privacy…and my peace and quiet.

I grew up in a tenement building on Manchester’s West Side. We lived on the bottom floor, and it seemed as if every few months, the tenants above us would move out and new ones would move in.

There was the couple from Canada who enjoyed dancing something called the French quadrille. Every Saturday night, other couples would visit them and the dancing would begin. I had no idea what a quadrille was, but it involved a lot of stomping.

My parents and I would sit in our living room and try to watch TV while the old chandelier on the ceiling overhead would swing back and forth. I missed half of my favorite Saturday night TV shows because I was too busy looking up, waiting for the chandelier to come crashing down on my head. My father, on the other hand, said he was waiting for the foot of one of the quadrille dancers to come through the ceiling.

Then there was the couple who had a dog, which they left alone in their apartment while they worked all day. The dog howled the entire time they were gone, first softly, like whimpering, and then louder and in higher octaves as the day progressed. By late afternoon, it sounded similar to an air-raid siren.

Whenever someone would call us, all they’d hear on the other end of the phone was, “Arroooooooh! Arroooooooh!” We actually had to shout above the howling to be heard, and then we usually had to guess at what the response was because the dog would drown it out.

The most amusing, however, were the newlyweds who moved in. When they argued, which was frequently, they would loudly shout at each other, and we could hear every word as clearly as if we were sitting in their apartment. Most of their arguments were so ridiculous, we had to struggle not to laugh out loud.

One night, for example, they were arguing about the husband’s handkerchiefs.

“They are disgusting! I refuse to wash them!” the wife shouted at him. “Use tissues from now on!”

“Tissues are for sissies!” he shouted back. “Manly hands like mine poke right through them!”

“Then use a whole handful of them at once! I’m sick of finding your boogers in the bottom to the washing machine!”

Another time, they argued about her cooking.

“You haven’t touched any of your tuna casserole,” she snapped at him. “I thought you loved my tuna casserole!”

“That was when we were single and I was trying to be polite,” he said. “Now that we’re married, I can tell you the truth. Even the cat would bury this stuff!”

“You’re heartless!” she cried, bursting into tears. “I’m never going to cook for you again!”

“My stomach will send you a thank-you card!” he shouted back.

That was another drawback of living directly below them. We often could smell what the wife was cooking for dinner. And believe me, it smelled like everything from skunk to burnt rubber. When Christmas rolled around, my father joked that he was going to buy the husband a year’s supply of antacid.

I think the couple finally ended up getting a divorce. We saw the wife leave one night, suitcase in hand, and she never returned.

And finally, a grouchy elderly woman moved in. She was quiet, but complained about everything. If I played out in the yard with my friends and we laughed too much, she complained. If my parents watched TV late at night, she complained.

She even complained when my mother sang while hanging clothes out on the clothesline because she said my mom couldn’t carry a tune (actually, she was right about that, but my mother was highly insulted).

But now that I’m about the same age as that grouchy elderly woman was, I think I can empathize. I mean, if I moved into a condo or an apartment and had to live with noisy people above me or next door, I’m pretty sure I’d be known as a crabby old complainer, too. For one thing, the older I get, the less patience I have. I’m even beginning to understand why John Wesley Hardin once shot a man for snoring.

So for the sake of all condo and apartment dwellers, I think I’m going to try to stay in my house for as long as possible.

I’m pretty sure they’ll thank me for it.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net