Pet Peeve #11 – Obnoxious Night Walking

No matter where you are in the world, how new the place is that you’re staying at –at night time it is noisy. When people are trying to sleep and the house is quiet, sound is amplified by, I don’t know – a million.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse

                I don’t care if it’s Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Kwanza, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Australia Day, The Queen’s Birthday, Kentucky Derby, or NBA Finals – there is always something stirring at night, making enough noise to drown out a Snoop Dogg concert.

                It is almost always for a midnight tinkle, sometimes a midnight snack, but people get up in the middle of the night far too often. It doesn’t matter how you move, you will make noise. You are not a ninja. When you walk it sounds like someone has the Jungle Book playing at full blast on the scene when the elephants parade. I don’t know where this misconception of silence at nights comes from, it is damn near impossible to walk through the house without making a sound. Clomping your feet so care free like there is no one else in the house, and then getting upset when other people make noise. Try to go to the toilet right before you go to bed. I thought this was something we learned so we would stop wetting the bed – early.

                If you think you can still get up and do everyone a favor by tip-toeing, you’re wrong. Everywhere you step is a squeaky floorboard. If you have somehow eradicated your house of the squeaky floorboard, someone has left something on the floor, and when you step on it with all of your body weight on the ball of your foot – you will scream, I promise you.

                If you have a door to open at your desired location, it will squeak. My guess is that there are a ton of doors between you and your destination. Bedroom door, toilet door, kitchen door, fridge door, so many doors, so many opportunities for a squeak or a slam. Oh you didn’t slam the door? In the middle of the night, when your ankle clicks when you are trying to tip-toe – it sounds like a fucking gun shot. So when you shut a door, yes, it sounds like you slammed it.

                Say somehow you get all this way without making a sound. I don’t care if you’re tall or short, fat or skinny, whether you stand or sit. When you pee it sounds like you are pouring a cup of tea from the top of a ladder. When you flush it sounds like the cookie monster is gargling. And when you wash your hands it sounds like Wolverine is scratching a blackboard.

                Yeah, you might get lucky and not wake anyone up. But you still have to get back into your bed with those noisy ass springs. I lie to you not, it sounds like a five car smash when you get back into bed in the middle of the night. Oh, and you’re not comfortable? So you have to writhe around for 20 minutes like you are suffering a gunshot wound to the chest? While everyone else in the house is suffering insomnia and possible hearing damage. And if you sleep with someone in your bed they have no chance of staying asleep. Memory foam you say? I don’t buy it.