One of the daunting discoveries I’ve made on this riveting journey that is life: With age comes an increasing intolerance to noise. When I first moved to Boston 5 years ago, the cacophonous urban soundscape didn’t phase me. Now I can actually feel my blood pressure shoot up; I react like a circus lion, relying on mind-clenching discipline to suppress my impetuous reactive instincts in the face of consummate distraction.
Some noise is good. Good noise includes:
- Music when the emittance is controlled by me or someone under my control.
- Non-sugared children laughing and playing.
- Birds singing, crickets chirping, leaves rustling in the wind, etc..
- Background babble in restaurants and bars.
Some noise is bad. Bad noise includes:
- Music when it’s blasting from a car, someone’s head phones, or a talentless subway musician.
- Boisterous drunk or dumb people.
- Children shrieking, whining reiteratively or sitting next to me in a restaurant.
- Sirens, car alarms, idling buses, modified car engines, and just about any noise made by a car.
- Construction sites.
Bad noise drives people to insanity. Exhibit A: The number of homicides attributable to conflict between neighbors regarding the acceptable decibel level of a stereo. People don’t like it when other people’s noise intrudes on their space. That’s why gliding down streets in a calm quiet car is so much preferable to walking down the street, victim to noise pollution.
Exhibit B: Yesterday’s morning commute at 7AM. I experienced at least a dozen separate (but often simultaneous) encounters with bad noise in less than 25 minutes. It’s inescapable in this city. Even in the relative quiet of staid Kendall Square, I heard a car alarm, a jackhammer, gratuitous honking, and a BLAST of meringue. (And oh, there is nothing more grating than being subject to an audial attack of meringue. There really is only one meringue song, and every Dominican in Boston drives around blaring it. )
Waiting for the T, there’s static-ridden pre-recorded messages about unattended packages that drive some to cover their ears. On the T, there’s kids… incredibly perky kids romping around the train while a crazy person sits with her head in her lap, baying “Uhhhmigod” over and over. Then I get to the Financial District, the streets of which are actually just inter-connected construction sites that buses, trucks, and hot-tempered bankers in SUVs plow through. The straw that nearly pushed me into the Harbor: An ambulance, sirens blarin’ as it moves 5mph through heavy traffic, rendering all us pedestrians at the cross-walk temporarily deaf.
In short: Boston is shortening my life and I’m retiring to a hobby farm. In forty years, if I make it.
