Noisy Neighbor

I love camping. Mind you, my idea of camping is spending the night in the middle of nowhere inside a travel trailer equipped with microwave, TV, DVD player, Internet access and every other convenience known to human kind, but, regardless of how modernized it is, I still choose to call it camping.

As I write this rant, more commonly known as a blog, I am in the midst of a camping trip in the beautiful North Georgia mountains. While camping, I have discovered that my favorite thing to do is ... well ... absolutely nothing at all. Granted, on occasion you'll catch me writing or, as I'm doing right now, whining and belly aching ... err ... I mean ... blogging, but doing absolutely nothing at all is my favorite past time, bar none, during these trips. In order to do absolutely nothing at all, the proper attitude must be embraced. Such an attitude requires, among other things, sleeping in late into the morning. Getting up before, say, 10:00 AM, is highly detrimental to the cause of doing absolutely nothing at all. It might accidentally motivate you which could have disastrous consequences.

In keeping with my favorite camping past time, under a delightful sprinkle of rain, I was sleeping this morning at the unspeakably early hour of 8:30 AM when I was disturbed from my slumber by ... noise. Oh the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise.! Looking out my window I saw at the campsite next to ours, a man, sporting a mustache, greased back and clearly dyed black hair, along with 20 gallons of lard centrally located underneath where I supposed his belly button must have been, with a guitar in his hand. To make matters worse, he was doing something to it that some might argue could have been considered playing it. I, for one, completely dismiss the notion that what he was doing to that guitar was anything other than extracting vile noise out of it. There should be laws to protect guitars from such foul treatment at the hands of people such as my next-door neighbor. It would have been bad enough if he had actually played the damn thing at least semi-decently, but that was clearly too much to ask. Instead, he plucked at the strings with what I assumed was the same motion he would have used to scratch himself if he had known I was watching him. I am convinced that men believe that scratching themselves should be a spectator sport.

Why is it, I ask, that from all the available sites, of which there were plenty to select from when he came in, did he have to select the one next to us. 8:30 AM, when the kids are at home (as in not here with us) is a time to sleep, not to be serenaded by a tone deaf rock and roll wannabe. Not even burying my head underneath my pillow was of any use as the sound waves, seeked out and successfully found my now malfunctioning ear-drums, making themselves at home deep in the recesses of my tormented skull.

What could possess anyone to walk out of a perfectly good camper in the rain, and go and sit down a few feet away from their only neighbor's window and force screams of agony from a six stringed musical instrument? If I wouldn't know better I would swear that he did this on purpose. I think he was actually proud of his noise and wanted to be acknowledged by us, his neighbors, for generating it.

I so do wish people would consider how their actions affect others around them. I'm usually a much nicer person than this blog might indicate, but NOT today!!!!!