The Cowboys and the Parking War: The Musical

We kind of hate our neighbors.

Prelude: They're really loud. Like, loud loud. It doesn't help that they have a t.v. in their kitchen now, because we hear them all the time. They have disgustingly large and loud trucks, one of which has a weird CB radio/megaphone attached to it (which they use at obscene hours). They get drunk and fight in the parking lot. They do donuts in the church parking lot behind our house. My wall neighbor stays up until 3:00 am talking with his girlfriend (I'm convinced he's gay, mostly because he does about 80% of the talking. What kind of straight guy does that?!). They also play music really loud, and it's terrible music. Like... country music and Backstreet Boys.*

We refer to them as "the cowboys." And when I say "we," I mean Katy, Kate, and I (and possibly Shannon, I'm not sure). And when we say "them" we mean one or two of the neighbors and their friends. Jenna has pointed out that we aren't sure if they're actually cowboys or not, but at least two are hicks and more than one of their friends are.

We have a limited amount of covered parking at my apartment, but plenty of not-covered parking. In the specific apartment building that I live in, each apartment theoretically gets 2 covered parking spots. But there is nothing in the lease or anything in the law that says you can't park in someone else's covered parking. Which brings us to...

Act I, Scene 1: Katy discovered that Kate's car had been booted. When she investigated it, she found that both their passes had been stolen. After Kate explained to the parking people that she did in fact live here, they took off her boot without a problem. I was actually in class when this all happened, but when they told me, my first guess was the cowboys.

Act I, Scene 2: The next day, our downstairs doorbell rang. Katy answered the door and one of the cowboys was there (once again, I was not there when this happened). He asked whose car was in their second spot and told Katy to get the keys and move it. When Katy said no, he said that he had called management, who told him that those spots were theirs, not ours (and that we had to move our cars. This was a lie.). This incident only solidified our suspicions.

Act I, Scene 3:  We're all on good terms with management. They love to use our apartment for tours because we a) have the "nice" fridge and b) we're clean. They're really nice, even if I forget to pay my rent on time (it was once, I swear). The lady in the office told us that when she went to talk to them, the guy who answered the door plead the Fifth. We laughed; mostly because they felt threatened about parking passes.

Act II, Scene 1: We took all their covered parking spots. In the words of Katy: "I just wanted to be a bitch."

Act I, Scene 2: I can hear the parking lot. One of the trucks pulled in a few minutes after Katy got home. Katy decided to check her car, just in case they had done something to it. Lo and behold, hers and Kate's passes had been stolen again. Management was not happy. The next day, they got yet another set of passes.

Act II, Scene 3: We told management about all the things the cowboys have done to piss us off. We didn't have evidence of their illegal activities, but we told them anyway. We hadn't previously delved on how horrible they were, but this week we let loose.

Act III, Scene 1: Katy found an empty can of soda left on her car. No big deal. But she did put it inside the pair of boots sitting by their door, just to return the favor.

Act III, Scene 2: We were eating lunch/sitting around in the kitchen when we saw that one of the cowboys was going into the office. When he got back to his apartment, Katy and I listened (our walls are quite thin) as they called us bitches and blamed us for a missing mirror attachment on one of the trucks. We laughed, because none of us have ever touched their trucks. Apparently management threatened to fine them if another pass went missing. Since then, nothing's happened.

Act IV: WINNING.
(In the words of Kate: "I'm the queen of passive-aggressiveness.")

Since management is on our side, I think we're fine. I should mention that one of the neighbors (not one of the cowboys) was quite nice about the whole thing. But now I'm paranoid about my car getting keyed. And this concludes my biased view on the cowboys and the parking war.


*I do have an undying love for the Backstreet Boys, but when our hickish neighbors play it often, we begin to wonder.