One day when we’re old and counting our blessings, my wife and I will look at each other across our bowls of porridge and gum the words:

Oh, that was the time I fainted in front of the television!

Oh, that was the time I found a 50-euro note laying on the ground outside the supermarket!

Oh, that was the time Humphrey the Hamster, our daughter’s first pet, died!

Oh, that was the time our weird neighbour cranked the music in the middle of the night so loud, and we had to call the cops because we couldn’t get her to even answer the door or the telephone!

Sounds like things that occur only once in a while, but they all happened over the past 24 hours. The round-up:

German woman faints in front of television

My wife is not one of these wilting-flower types or a drama queen, but she has a physical reaction to seeing other people suffer. She faints. If you’re that type, best not view what we saw yesterday morning while watching the men’s downhill at Kitzbühel live on television. It’s one of most violent skiing crashes I’ve seen in a long time, and I remember thinking as the American skier Scott McCartney lay there twitching like a rabbit who’d been run over by a car: please, whoever’s doing the directing, CUT THE CAMERA AWAY.

The video is taken from Swiss television, but we were watching it on ARD, the German public broadcaster, whose announcers were so shocked they didn’t speak for nearly a minute. The crowd fell silent for what seemed like ages, then the replay came on, their reaction to which you can also hear. I’m glad they had the good graces not to show the replay of what at the time seemed to be the man’s convulsive death throes.

Is he going to live? asked my daughter.

I don’t know, I said, but if he does, he might not be able to walk again, or talk even. When he fell, he was going as fast as we usually do down the Autobahn, and he smacked his head so hard, he lost his helmet.

Suddenly my wife was on the floor, lying on her back with her arms behind her head, moaning a little and saying in a weak voice: we shouldn’t watch this.

I turned it off, left my wife on the floor because she wanted to be alone, went to do some errands, all the while thinking of how much the images disturbed me too. It was only later that she told me she’d actually lost consciousness.

German woman finds 50-euro note on the ground

Some people are lucky, I guess. I told my wife later: maybe you can put up a sign on the store’s bulletin board. Found: 50-euro note. Owner may claim by quoting serial number.

Hamster falls, dies.

Our daughter took her pet hamster out of its cage to show to a friend, but as she was holding it in her hand, it bit her on the finger and she dropped him to the floor. Unfortunately, she was also holding his food dish in her other hand, and dropped that too – right onto his hindquarters.

I get this panic call at work.

Daddy, we need an emergency veterinarian clinic! Humphrey’s hurt – I dropped his dish on him – and he’s lying in the corner, hardly moving! Can you find one for us?

They were getting ready to take him to the vet’s when they found he’d died.

It’s OK, I tell her. You gave him a good home and it wasn’t your fault what happened. It was an accident.

I get home around midnight find her hamster in the little transport box she used to carry him around in if she were taking him over to a friend’s place, or to the vet. Is it ghoulish to take a picture of a dead pet? I don’t know. I found her flower very touching.

Bizarre neighbour cranks music in the middle of the night.

So since I hate flopping straight to bed when I come home from work, I was lying on the couch quietly reading the first few pages of the newly published diary of a young French Jewish woman when suddenly I hear the unmistakeable sound of German rock music from the 70s – the kitchy pop tunes you just can’t avoid while flipping through the aural wasteland which is the German radio dial.

Damn.

The volume reminded me of the teenage kid a couple of floors down, now since Gott sei Dank flown the parental nest, but in whose worst phases would invite all his metalhead friends over for a ‘rents-away-let’s-all-play no-holds-barred blow-out, sometimes topped off by a marathon open-window scream-n-moan session courtesy of his multi-orgasmic girlfriend.

But it wasn’t thrashmetal or grungecore or whatever the fuck they call it these days, so I knew it couldn’t be him. By now my wife was awake and asking me bleary-eyed: who can THAT be?

Donning a jacket I went out to investigate and it turns out it’s the frumpy, 50-ish Frau who lives right next door to us, which would explain why our bedroom is now rumbling like a disco with shitty music.

So we knock on her door. Ring the doorbell. Knock again, ring again, on and off for ages and get no response.

I go online to telefonbuch.de, find her number, dial it. It rings forever.

We try banging on the door, so hard my wife says this morning her knuckles ache. I go out onto our balcony, try to peer into her place, but though the light are on I can see no shadows moving, no sign of life.

Maybe she’s had a heart attack, I say. She could actually be in some kind of trouble. Best call the cops, let them deal with her.

So my wife calls the cops, but in the meantime, we go back to our trying to raise her. My wife then gets the idea to go downstairs and ring the buzzer from outside, because it has a different tone.

Finally, after another 10 minutes of my wife and I alternately buzzing from the door and from downstairs and just as I’m giving up for the last time and walking away, the woman comes to the door.

Oh, she says. Did you ring the doorbell?

The woman has a face which betrays a lifetime of alcohol and cigarettes, but she doesn’t appear to be that wasted. Aside from a few spells of awkwardness over the past seven years where I actually had to come into contact with this person – I find her extremely repellant, to be honest – she has pretty well kept to herself.

I look at her, don’t say anything. Then I say: often.

What?

Often. We’ve been trying to get you to come to the door for the past half an hour. We gave up and phoned the police.

Then she says something that really floors me.

Oh, that’s OK. Have a nice evening.

I look at her, too stunned to say anything.

Yes, I say finally. I’m sure it’ll be a really nice evening, unsuccessful this time at hiding my anger and frustration.

A half-hour later the cops come. She lets them in the building, they trudge up the stairs to her door and ask if anything’s the matter. Oh, nothing she says. I was just playing some music, nothing special. Would you like to come in?

Maybe she just wanted some company, I don’t know. She does seem rather lonely.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

PS: Scott McCartney is going to be OK, they say. Miracle.

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