Last night my apartment complex held a pot luck meet and greet at our clubhouse. I went to the store and dropped some money on food and drink to help the pot luck out. When I first arrived at 7pm there was only one other guy. After about 20 minutes more residents arrived. We began eating pizza and introducing ourselves and asked the manager to change the radio station to something we could all enjoy. After about an hour a few of the workers who are all hispanic and non-english speaking arrived.

They began bringing in tray upon tray of food and which ended with a giant pot of something that smelled funny. I thought this would be a great opportunity to meet some of them and try to bridge the divide between us, unfortunately I was wrong. One of the workers walked over and changed the radio station to something latino and cranked the volume so me and the others who had arrived early moved out to the patio to escape the loud music. Roughly an hour later we noticed one of the workers proping open our complex gate and about 25 people entering (non-residents). A few of them were carting a stereo system inside and in a few minutes one of them was now djing and placed one of his speakers right by the windows to the patio.

Barely able to talk we decided, unconsciously, to try and stick it out. Perhaps the complex manager would step in and calm things down and start the whole meet and greet thing. Then the patio exploded with loud latino music as kids yelling at each other in spanish barrelled out the door leaving it open. I must have closed that door 15 times asking the kids to please close it on when they came out (i know kids right...).

Finally the group of us english speaking people decided to move to the sun porch in back where the music would be less loud. Once back there a girl inside holding a baby near one of the speakers noticed us through the back door. She opened the door and turned around... again the music was drowing us out so I got up and walked over to close the door as I was shutting it she turned and stared at me. I apologized and motioned to my ears.

10 minutes later a young husky hispanic boy (apprx 8-10 yrs old) and two other kids came screaming out to the porch again leaving the door wide open. I asked the older kid to close the door behind him and he replied "I don't speak spanish... I mean english" and ran off.

Frustrated we finally decided to move to one of our apartments to hang out.

This story occurs everyday to someone somewhere in our country. Citizens and neighbors afraid to talk to each other, afraid to use their own clubhouse or local stores. Our society is becoming segregated and divided. It pains me that I cannot talk to my neighbors and that they would be so rude to just overtake an event aimed at getting us to know one another and turning it into their own little party.