A Lighter View
Sounds of "silence"
By K.E.H. Stagg

Jan. 21, 2010

What is it about elevators, libraries and doctor’s offices that make people think if they’re wearing earphones, no one else can hear them? This was brought to my attention several times in the past week as I sat—or stood, in elevator instances—next to fellow citizens utilizing what they wrongly imagine to be privately broadcast white noise.

The doctor’s office public broadcast is sometimes the result of patients too proud to admit they need hearing aids or perhaps have them turned up to full volume. But there are plenty of individuals listening to their iPods or have iPhones jammed in their inner ear canals and either don’t know or don’t care that the entire waiting room now knows that Fifi tinkled on the new carpet, which cost the equivalent of a Third World army’s payroll. Or that Heinie-head’s attorney just filed divorce proceedings when he is clearly the one at afault in this whole mess.

Do the rest of us look deaf? Because we’re not. In fact, we’re all trying not to point at the sign bearing the instruction: “Please terminate all cell phone conversations before approaching the desk.” How about changing that to: “While we do our utmost to protect your privacy in accordance with HIPAA regulations, you are sabotaging this effort by broadcasting the details of your life to everyone in the lobby who isn’t also on his/her cell phone”?

But it’s not just cell phones that make unwilling eavesdroppers of some of us in Dillsburg. I’m convinced a guy on the elevator was completely unattuned to the fact that his music (and I use the term in its loosest possible sense, because it seemed to consist entirely of screaming and there was no harmony, let alone melody, involved) was broacast loud enough for the entire car to scream along with, had any of us been so inclined. Judging by his lack of facial expression, he didn’t feel the weight of our combined disapproving stares, nor the telepathic vibes assuring him that at least some of us were prepared to wash out the mouth of his expletive-hurling “musician” with soap.

That experience paled in comparison to an encounter with a fellow patron at the library whose identity will forever remain protected by anonymity, although he knows who he is! His yawns, belches, sighs and other interesting—okay, I can admit that they were frightening!—intestinal noises probably registered on the Richter scale...in Asia.

He was oblivious to the combined entertainment and horror value he provided the rest of us who were perusing the shelves. Because there was zero sound emanating from his earphones, I’m guessing he utilized them to drown out any sound made by the rest of us fortunate enough to patronize the library at the same time. However, I will swear on a stack of best-sellers that none of us made anything like the amount—or variety—of noises that he did. I sincerely recommend he jettison the “white noise” out of consideration for the rest of us who don’t really want to know that he’s bored, bilious and on the verge of a bodily combustion.

Is anyone else longing to return to the days of peace and quiet? I’m sorry, you’ll have to speak up...my Nano is drowning you out.