How C Made Peace With the Upstairs Neighbours

We live in a split level duplex What this means is that where most duplexes are side by side, each space having a couple of floors and being narrow, in our place we each get our own floor. We are on the ground floor and our neighbours are upstairs.

I think these places were built in the 1950s. I don't really have anything to cbase that guess on, other than something someone said once ('I think they build these in the 50s') and the fact that they seem pretty old and run down. Noise travels very quickly. We probably know a lot more about the upstairs neighbours life than we want to know, and we are keenly aware that they know a lot more about ours than they want to know. Especially keenly when C is melting down.

Sometimes I wonder how aware C himself is of what it means to be sharing spac like this. So I was particularly interested in this conversation I overheard recently. The neighbours have a new puppy that plays in the front yard, and C is obsessed with it, so he runs out to play with the puppy and has a lot more face to face interaction with the neighbours because of it. Here is how this one went:

C: Do you sometimes hear me screaming?
Neighbour: Yes.
C: And throwing things?
Neighbour: Yes.
C: And do you hear me swear?
Neighbour: Yes.

*pause*

C: But you swear too.
Neighbour: That's true.
C: And you drink a lot and shout.

*pause*

Neighbour: That's also true.
C: So then we're even.

*pause*

Neighbour: OK. We're even.