"Hallmark Movies and Speeding Tickets"

Growing up, I never once opened my bedroom window. For sixteen years, it served as decorative and a place to hold curtains, with a fire safety sticker that read Tot Finder, facing the parking lot of our apartment complex. 

At eighteen, when I moved in with my dad, he made the living room into my bedroom, and I was thrilled to have a room three to four times larger than my old room. The living room faced the street and had these beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows with white molding. 

Opening the curtains, I could bring in tons of natural light into my space. In a house with central air and heat exchange through the floor vents in my room, when my room gets too warm or too cold, I open the window to make my room more comfortable. I could use my window to keep an eye out for delivery drivers and front porch packages. 

And I live on a nice street with two-hundred-year-old houses and a beautiful church on the corner. During the summer, the view is something out of a Hallmark movie with the feel of a small town a block away from Main Street. During this neverending and dreary winter, though, the snow goes from picturesque and homey to depressing and bitter cold.

Quickly, though, I found one flaw to giant windows that face the street: noise. And not just any noise. Most nights, early on, I had trouble sleeping and would lie awake in my dark room, the whirring drone and cool air from my box fan filled the room between my bed and the windows. 

As I began to doze off around one o’clock, I would hear the whoop-whoop of the police siren. Red and blue lights would flood my room like a spotlight and wouldn’t turn off until both the police car and speeding vehicle pulled away. 

I live on one of the busiest streets and right next to one of the busiest intersections in town. While it’s a nightmare leaving my driveway and getting anywhere during peak hours of the day, I didn’t expect it would cause me regular trouble in the middle of the night. And there’s nothing I can do about it. 

I live just a few blocks and two streets away from the police station. People will always fly around the corners late at night when the streets are empty and night shift patrol officers will always pull them over. Why it has to be in front of my house every time, I’ll never know why.