What’s worse is now our emergency sirens have been upgraded so they can even TALK to me when frightened public servants decide I need a 3AM wake-up call. I mean c’mon crash somebody else’s REM sleep party - I’m already hosting a platoon of voices in my vacuous skull full of burping Tupperware, so who needs yet another one? Never once in my life have I seen an effective air raid over my hut or worse, a free-range ‘one-too-many’ tipsy Godzilla tearing down my town.
Also now when skulking around the ‘burbs’, every cross-walk I encounter seems to bark some kind of warning chirp & chime. Some even squawk a doomsday countdown clock if I haven’t blazed across 100 feet of tarry roadbed in 3 seconds or less? Geez I don’t even think that Jamaican ‘BOLT’ guy can run that fast much less a dragging leisure-geezer like myself? Believe me I’ve been married a long time so I don’t need a shrill harpy ‘ice-pick in the ear canal’ reminder to know when it’s time to clear out of the way – my wife has been defending our refrigerator for years.
So hey if you are dumb enough to park your bike directly behind a trash truck or semi no amount of high pitched peep-beeping from a ‘back-up alarm’ is going to save you from yourself anyway. I just can’t imagine Daniel Boone, the ‘Abe-inator’, or even those poker playing dogs memorialized in felt, requiring so much ‘hand-holding’ in their era. Unlike today, those folks let the chips 'clink' to the floor as they may and understood, THAT was their one and only auditory warning. Sometimes it's not fair but the tenets of self-reliance, responsibility and yes, even the possibility of death are significant tests in real life. But compared to our current needy and feckless populace, our ancestors just seemed readily able to grasp and MEET their challenges with a little more gusto - and with A LOT LESS NOISE!
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Being a little hard of hearing does have some perks....I'm learning. ;)
ReplyDeleteOnce I stayed in a hotel corner room where traffic signals outside BEEEEEPED tp tell blind people when the light was green.
ReplyDeleteGlad it helped them, but was like the water torture for me. Found myself counting seconds between beeps, and unable to relax while waiting
for the next one. Almost drove me as crazy as the blog writer we just read.
(But he's funny-crazy, which is OK.)
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Well, I'm sorta with you. We have this very rude engineer on the train that loves to blow his whistle when coming through town at some ungodly hour in the morning, and it's not once or twice we're talking five or six times to make sure everyone got woken up. Maybe he feels if he's up everyone should be. Sheesh! Thanks for stopping by. It's always nice to see your smiling face. ~hehe~ Have a great weekend.
ReplyDeleteI ear you! I ear you!
ReplyDeleteI'm working with a deaf client. It makes life difficult. We have to write in a communictaion book. Really tricky.
ReplyDeleteSince a tornado or two have twisted their way around here, I believe in the emergency sirens but yes the backing up alarms and other noise makers lose their intended effect in volume of other noise makers. But the one I detest the most is the car alarm. What a dumb idea. Everyone just ignores them. I think a car theft would do better by setting the alarm off first wait for everyone to ignore it and then steal the car.
ReplyDeleteCar alarms are very effective at making noise, but they go off so frequently that no one even seems to notice anymore. Maybe they should be LOUDER.
ReplyDeleteI do love the way you write :o)
ReplyDelete