Ranting against noise may ease stress (05/21/07)

Emma finally talked to me on the phone last week. She said, "Moo."

Then she answered, "Cack, cack," when I asked her what the duck says. She also knows chicken, horse, pig, cat and dog sounds, and said, "bye," when her mother told her to.

This is a major accomplishment for the one-year-old as she usually just listens when the phone is handed to her. The only time she carries on a conversation is if nobody is on the other end of the line.

It has been said that we spend a year or two teaching a child to speak then the next few years trying to get them to shut up. Anyone who has ever listened to a pre-schooler talk non-stop for hours at a time secretly wonders if there is a humane method to get them to just hush. I can tell you from personal experience that there is no way on earth to silence a babbling child. If by some chance they are quiet for any length of time you better find them fast because they are into something they aren't supposed to be.

One of the hard things about growing older is that often we lose the ability to hear high-pitched sounds like the voices of young children. When my daughter, Beth, was a little girl and my grandmother was still alive, my grandmother couldn't hear what Beth was saying no matter how clearly she enunciated. Loudness wasn't a factor. The pitch of Beth's voice was out of hearing range for my grandmother. If she were still alive today, Emma's sweet voice would also be out of her hearing range.

I wonder if today's young people realize that all the horrendously loud music they listen to will one day rob them of the ability to hear their grandchildren's words? Probably not. They are still of the age where they are invincible and no matter how foolish they are nothing bad will ever happen. Ruining their hearing is a rite of passage for them.

Unfortunately, other people are forced to share in the cacophony. We supposedly have a noise ordinance in the town where I live but it is not enforced. Whenever loud cars sit at the stop sign on the corner or even pass by on the street our windows rattle and my chest hurts.

Just as some animals can hear sounds out of human hearing range, I seem to be able to feel sound as well as hear it. Loud noises are painful and make me feel as if I am being beaten with a sledge hammer as the sound waves slam into my body.

Moving isn't an option at this time. Complaining does no good. I'm not fast enough to catch the noisy drivers and it would probably be dangerous for me if I could. What I need is a device that will automatically lower the sound on any radio or other noisemaker to something that is not audible more than five feet away from the driver of the vehicle. I would prefer a controller that disables the sound system entirely and permanently but that would be going to extremes.

There is probably a way to eliminate the damage to my ears and my windows but I don't know what it is. I suppose I could build mountains around my home to absorb the noise but it would make it a little hard for the cars to see around the corner and when the spring rains come we would probably float away as all the water would run downhill towards the house. I can't wear ear plugs all the time as there are softer sounds that I enjoy.

I don't understand why I can visit other towns and cities and not have my ears assaulted with the din of other people's music and yet I can't sit in my own home and listen to the quiet. What I would like is for noise ordinances to be consistently enforced in conjunction with people being considerate of others' rights to silence.

What I would like is to continue to be able to hear a tiny voice go, "Moo," on the other end of the telephone.

I suppose that is too much to ask.[[In-content Ad]]