Music has been playing nonstop in my apartment for the past year or so. It’s on twenty-four hours a day whether I’m home or not. Perhaps this doesn’t seem odd to some folks, but I was raised during the waste not, want not era. When you left a room, you turned off the lights even if you were coming right back. If it was cold, you didn’t turn up the heater; instead, you wore a sweater or put on an extra pair of socks and wrapped up in a blanket. Since there were starving children in other countries (this was during the 1970s and 80s before we had them in our own country), you had to pretend to eat everything on your plate and then go spit it out in the toilet so you could have dessert. And, so the thought of just leaving your house with anything left on, like the television so your dog can watch his stories or with music playing, was simply unheard of.

However, some time ago, I began noticing that whenever I was writing or just puttering around my place with music streaming online, a voice would constantly interrupt and say that someone else was listening to my account (which they are not ok with). Did I want to keep listening? At first, I didn’t care much because I’m lazy and would rather not deal with stuff until there’s no other option, so I’d keep listening, knowing that whoever “they” were couldn’t if I was and that was good enough for me. But the more it kept happening, the more annoyed I became, and I began to pay attention and snoop around a bit. I discovered that not only had a stranger who was too cheap to fork out $4.99 a month for Pandora, which no one listens to anymore and is almost as embarrassing as having a Yahoo account, (almost) hacked mine and was more than occasionally listening to it. They also had their own atrocious and quite extensive playlist intertwined with mine.

“Well, please make yourself at home, jackass.”

I realized I had two options- the first was to change my password. This was not happening because I’d made a pact with myself that I would never change another password unless it had to do with credit cards or bank accounts. I won’t do it. I’m done. And to be honest, I’m not sure I can come up with another one because I can’t even remember any of the ones I’ve come up with in the past and then have had to change. So unless it is something significant, “Have at it, hackers.” Recently, someone hacked one of my social media accounts and started trying to sell sweatshirts with my name on them. My only course of action was to post, “I hope you have better luck with my career than I did.”

Instead, I chose the second option- never turning off the music. It was easy and funny. Okay, maybe it wasn’t funny initially, but it’s funny after a year. It proves that if you’re going to do the joke, you’ve got to be willing to commit. It’s comedy 101, people.

It makes me smile and happy thinking about this person sitting down after another long day of successfully avoiding doing anything meaningful or worthwhile with their life and are ready to enjoy a relaxing night of gas station wine and a plate of freshly microwaved Totino’s Pizza Rolls as their crappy playlist sets the mood for mediocrity in the background. But they can’t because I’m already listening.

I picture how frustrated they are, how greedy and wasteful they must think I am, and how they rue the day they ever wasted their precious time hacking someone like me. And with a fist raised to the heavens, they rant about how “they’ll show me!” and get a job and pay for their own streaming service and be done with my selfish ass. But then, as the booze and carcinogens from the processed meat begin to dull their ambition and life span, they decide to give me one last chance and try again tomorrow because I can’t possibly listen twenty-four hours a day.

But alas…