So my neighbor just stopped by and gave my back door The Knock.

You’re familiar with The Knock. It’s the first step in taking action against 45 minutes of pent-up passive-aggressive steaming, of tossing and turning in bed while entertaining thoughts of calm, cool, collected confrontations that leaves the humiliated neighbor questioning not only his late-night decision to listen to music at louder-than-acceptable levels, but also his very manhood and raison d’etre.

(The) Knock, (The) Knock, went the back door.

The only problem was that as soon as I opened it, the angry look on my neighbor’s face dissipated. Immediately.

‘Oh, that’s not even loud,’ she said.

‘I know,’ I said.

(three seconds of prolonged silence, then cue lively discussion on shoddily constructed apartment buildings that transmit even the smallest footstep or softest bass thump of Blackalicious’ ‘Chemical Calisthenics.’)

Crisis averted, she went back to bed. I put on my headphones and continued to rock. I suppose I made a new friend on the third floor from my room two stories below by (softly) blasting good tracks.

Song of the moment: ‘Extraordinary Machine,’ Fiona Apple. ‘I make the most of it, I’m an extraordinary machine,’ she says. I agree.