Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Noise Pollution

Why is it that every office, retail store, and restaurant feels that they have to pipe in music and/or have a TV on? Yesterday, I had occasion to go with Anna Mae to 2 doctors' offices, a hair salon, an ice cream store, Rite Aid and Mervyns. Everywhere we went there was NOISE.

We sat outside at Cold Stone to eat our ice cream and the music was piped outside to compete with the road traffic. At the radiology center there was a TV show about a cook that everyone in the waiting room HAD to watch. Mervyns was probably the quietest, but with all the colorful clothes and fluorescent lights it was still too much stimulation. My nerves were all a jangle by the end of the day; I was so over stimulated that I couldn't go sleep. Give me my nice quiet home out in the country with bird song and the occasional lawn mower or tractor noise.

Ironically, 45 minutes in the Sprinter with 6 kids waiting for JL and Anna Mae who were with the orthopedist was preferable to store/office noise. We told stories. I told stories about me and my siblings when we were kids. Then the children took turns telling stories. They mostly told about wild life and pets, like the rattlesnake in the garden, the fawn in the woods, and Baxter in the kiddie pool.

I'll take the sweet sound of children's story telling over piped music or blaring TVs any day.

1 comment:

jenny said...

i'm with you!!! i'll be your neighbor. a few miles away of course.