Michael is my hero.

There are, of course, many reasons that Michael is my hero. The one I'm writing about today is just one of them.

We have college students living next door to us. They're renting a small, fairly ugly house that is pretty close to us on the north. We're on a corner lot, so on the south we don't really have anyone, and behind us live an elderly couple on the other side of our back yard and theirs. They love to plant flowers, so their yard is full of flowers beginning with crocuses in the springtime.

The college students are probably fairly typical for college students. Except that they live in a neighborhood with a whole bunch of non-college-student neighbors. Neighbors who have children and sleep at night and wake up in the morning. This is not how the college students operate, at least on the weekends.

This was brought home to me in a big way a couple of weekends ago between 3 and 4 a.m. on Sunday morning. That was when Simeon woke up. Because there was loud music playing in our room. Wait, why was there loud music in our room? The white noise machine was on, not music. Oh, right, it was our neighbors' music. Waking up the baby over the white noise machine between 3 and 4 a.m. on Sunday. For some reason, this seemed unreasonable to me at the time. Okay, it still seems unreasonable. So when I had put the baby back to sleep, I woke up Michael, briefly explained the situation, and said that we either needed to call the police or ask them to turn their music down.

Michael said that he thought we should at least give them the courtesy of asking them before calling the cops. So, he put on his jeans and went over. Shortly, the music was turned down and Michael came back. He'd had trouble getting their attention because the music was so loud they couldn't hear him knocking on their door. He'd had to go to the window, which had frightened them quite a bit. They were sitting around, eating, listening to music. Between 3 and 4 a.m.

Of course, I was very grateful to Michael for going over there that time, and also grateful that the college students have recognized that we don't like loud music at odd times in the night and haven't disturbed us in that way since then.

They did, however, take to practicing with their band at bedtime. This wouldn't be so bad except for the drums. Oh, the drums. Have you ever tried to get a 7 1/2-month baby to sleep to the sound of drums? It's not easy.

So, last night, Michael took Simeon over to introduce him to the neighbors and ask them to please, please, for the sanity of his wife, muffle the drums. He didn't want to, especially since it's not after 10 p.m. when the noise ordinance is in effect. However, he went over and asked, and they complied. And they even said to tell them if they were still too loud.

I was able to get Simeon to sleep with no problem, and Michael continues to rack up the hero points.