The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!

Yesterday was fun.

I sat down to do some reading for work and all was going fine until the little future felon, and his homeboy friend that lives upstairs, decided to chase each other, running up and down three floors of steps.

Keep in mind, that these steps are outside, made of solid steel, and are welded to the side of my apartment building. See where I'm going with this?

So not only are they screaming at each other, these two 13 year olds are stampeding three flights of stairs every 15 seconds. Needless to say I'm sure I'm not the only one they were pissing off. With each stomp they made, my entire apartment shook.

Of course I yelled a few obscenities through our paper-thin walls, but that only seem to encourage them. Once again my theory on parents having a license to have a child was reinforced. As I turned my TV up to try and drown out at least part of the noise I got my next nice surprise of the day.

Little hommie pulled the fire alarm.

*insert rant of explicatives here*

Myself, being the "veteran" tenant in our building, reluctantly called the maintenance guy who looks like Juan Valdez to let him know what happened. Naturally the two little bastards hommies ran, one back inside thinking he could hide, and the other I assume he went back to wherever he spawned from.

About ten minutes later the Dover Fire Department rolls up, sirens and lights blaring. I've got to give them full credit, their response was quick and efficient, like a well-oiled machine.

Standing outside, chatting with the civilized neighbors of mine, both of us complaining about the water buffalo upstairs, we informed the DFD what happened and they were not amused. Each of us was more than happy to rat out the future inmate. The senior fireman marched up to the second floor and pounded on the door where we told him to. There was no answer. He looked down at us. I said, "I know they're in there. They haven't left since they pulled it." The fireman sternly yelled into the door, "I'm not leaving until you open the door."

After a 15 second delay, little homie's white trash mother opened the door and acted ignorant to what was going on as the fireman informed her that her son would be receiving a hefty fine. He had the little pants-sagging, t-shirt-too-big-wearing, gonna rob me some day punk down to the truck to fill out some paper work as the rest of the building glared at him. All the while, he whined "I didn't do it". (After he realized he wasn't getting sent to jail, he admitted pulling it.)

It was clear that his mother didn't really care about the severity of this little stunt. And it was also clear that he would walk away learning nothing from this experience. It was even more apparent to me that I needed to move. After all, how can one be happy in their daily life when they despise the place they live in?

All in good time...