It sounded like popcorn warming in a microwave: sporadic bursts that quickened, gradually, to an arrhythmic clatter. “There it is,” Mary McKee said, staring out the front door of her home in Arlington, Va., on a recent afternoon. McKee, 43, a conference planner, moved to the neighborhood in 2005 and for the next decade and a half enjoyed a mostly tranquil existence. More arrived in short order, spreading out until there were six games going at once. Together they produced an hourslong ticktock cacophony that has become the unwanted soundtrack of the lives of McKee and her neighbors.

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Persons: ” Mary McKee, McKee Organizations: Walter Reed Community Center Locations: Arlington , Va