N: Noise – What’s all that racket? (WR)

N: What’s all that racket?

I lived in an apartment until I was eighteen. I grew up with two older sisters. They are 5 and 8 years older that I am. I’m not sure how active they were when they were young, but being the youngest child and only boy I’m sure I made up for whatever they lacked. Personally, I don’t think that I made that much noise when I played and jumped around in our apartment, but based on my downstairs neighbors, someone in our house must have made a lot of noise. We could tell that the noise was above tolerable levels because the people downstairs couldn’t tolerate it. They used a broomstick or some other long extension pole to pound on their ceiling to let us know we had exceeded the noise level meter in their apartment. I can’t imagine how their ceiling must have looked after all the times they used their noise reduction device. It’s not as if I planned to make all that noise.

I take no credit for the following video, but it seemed appropriate:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IRB0sxw-YU

Noise continued to follow me, both those I made and those I heard. Living outside of a New York City elevated subway yard and Gaelic Park Sports field certainly added to the daily and nightly noises we heard.

As I moved out on my own, it would have been the noises made by the strange number of musical instruments I got into. Even real instruments became noise, until I practiced enough to make the noise become music. Ask my brother-in-law who always reacted to the musical noises on my violin.

Christina, my wife, came from the quiet state of Iowa. Things that were not noise to me, were noise to her, mostly due to the volume I played them at. When you added my son into the mix, who had sensory integration issues as a child, more sounds became noise.  I have learned to adapt. Unfortunately, now when I am at places that in my youth would not have been noisy, I find them quite noisy. I was now used to quieter places.

As I continue to teach in schools, I have a much lower tolerance to noise than I had when I started teaching. Being unable to discern what people are saying in a crowded room when others are talking probably adds to my lower tolerance.

David’s future wife’s parents live on a farm in Massachusetts. When we stay there we get welcomed by the noise of all the animals, the crowing of the roosters, the barking of their dogs, and the wonderful wake up sounds of their guinea hens.

Guinea hens at Unity Farm

In fact, staying there recently inspired me to write this piece about noise.

I read somewhere that not all people hear sounds the same way. Where some people might hear the sounds of crickets as noise, others hear those same sounds a music, using a different part of their brain. Noises will continue to be a part of my life, most of which I can and will tolerate. Occasionally though, you might find me searching for that little piece of quiet. But Q for quiet, is a whole different letter to write about.