Living next to a neighbor who is loud late at night when you’re trying to sleep can be almost impossible to handle.
In today’s story, what’s even worse is that the neighbor is a college student in a dorm where the walls are extra thin.
After many sleepless nights due to the inconsiderate neighbor, the next door neighbor found a way to get revenge.
Let’s see how the story unfolds…
Loud Neighbor Gets Silenced
When I started my sophomore year in college (over 2 decades ago), the guy who moved into the dorm next to me was just a stereotypical meathead jock who was kind of overweight.
And it turns out, he was a bad neighbor.
He shares some things it’s helped to know about the dorm rooms…
Two things about these dorm rooms:
The walls were rather thin.
Not only did I hear every decibel of his loud music and TV, but one night he brought some girl home with him for some fun (the whole time I’m thinking to myself … unless she lost a bet, she wasn’t going to be happy until the check cleared).
The room on the other side of the wall from my bedroom was HIS bedroom, and for that “encounter” I could see the wall bowing in and out. It still makes me shudder.
The rooms had drop ceilings, like offices with cubicles built by the lowest bidder. This will come into play later.
He was bothered by the neighbor’s late night TV watching habit.
Anyway, a few days into fall semester that year, I discovered this guy had a habit of blasting his TV at full volume, from 11pm to 1am.
Since I had to be up before 7am, 4 times a week, this was not ok by me.
Despite my complaints to the ineffectual RA, nothing happened.
At first, I decided to counter this by putting a couple large speakers against the bedroom wall and blasting songs like Just One Fix by Ministry every morning beginning at 6am.
Somehow, he didn’t ever confront me, or change his TV habits, he just continued his late night noise pollution.
He was curious about what was above the drop ceiling in the dorm room.
One afternoon I decided to investigate what was above the drop ceiling in my bedroom.
After moving a few tiles I saw the coax cables for every dorm on this floor. And they were labeled with the room numbers on little tabs every 4 feet.
Jackpot.
He fiddled with the wires.
Also, I’d like to note that I had a part time job at RadioShack at this time (pretty sweet gig for a few reasons) so I finagled a couple tools – a coax cable stripper and crimping tool – and got a couple cable connectors and a female to female adapter (to connect 2 cables together).
I went home, cut the cable for my neighbor’s room, stripped each end and crimped on new cable connectors. Then I connected these together with the F-F adapter.
Then …..I waited until later that night.
He set about getting revenge.
Like clockwork, the TV was on at full volume. I stood up on my bed, and S L O W L Y unscrewed one of the connectors, just enough to cut off the signal to his room.
The sound of loud static became the most satisfying thing I ever heard.
It was then followed by “WHAT THE F***?!” on the other side of the wall, and then a lot of shouting, swearing, and banging on the innocent TV set.
He kept messing with the connector.
30 seconds later I screw the connector back in.
“BOUT TIME! PIECE O’ S***!”
A minute later I unscrewed it again.
The neighbor eventually gave up.
The shouting and banging continued and I just let it escalate for a couple minutes, to the point where he was just bellowing in impotent rage.
He honestly sounded like a humiliated water buffalo that was somehow capable of making vaguely human speech-like vocalizations.
He finally gave up and shut the TV off. 11:13pm. I screwed the connector back in and finally got a good night’s sleep.
The neighbor’s TV made the ultimate sacrifice.
FYI, this went on for 4 more days, that’s 5 altogether.
On the 6th day, which also happened to be trash day (we set our plastic bins outside the door for trash pickup), I walked out to see the shattered remains of a 20” Emerson TV set sitting in front of my neighbor’s room.
The plastic shell was deeply cracked in a few places, the glass tube was shattered, and even the power cord was yanked out and draped over the TV’s lifeless husk.
I chuckled, then I stood over the TV and bowed my head in a moment of solemn reflection.
Farewell Emerson TV, you had to be sacrificed in the name of sanity, and peace and quiet. Wherever you end up, I hope you’ll be in a better place.
I guess the neighbor never got another TV in the dorm.
Otherwise, it would’ve been the same problem.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted…
Here’s the perspective of a former Radio Shack employee.
This reader has another idea for revenge…
This reader feels bad for the TV.
Another reader had a suggestion that would’ve made the revenge easier.
This reader had another suggestion but liked the way the story ended.
Working at Radio Shack certainly came in handy in this situation!
Those were the days.
If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.