never quiet.

We have a problem with noise pollution here. You know how phones play mp3s now, well I’ll be in the grocery store and the stockers will have their phones playing music while they stack cereal boxes. Or the cashiers have their phones rocking out while they ring up groceries. The most disconcerting for me was the young man who was up on a ladder directly under a loudspeaker, they are called “loud” speakers for a reason, with his personal music also blaring.

It’s even a problem at home. When you have more than one teenager with a cell phone. It seems fashionable to get a cell phone, but then not buy minutes for it and just use it to take photos and listen to music. As I was in the kitchen stirring soup, one of the girls just stood in there watching, and occasionally commenting, all while entertaining us with her phone playing music. The thing is, I already had the radio on, and was too accommodating to do anything about it. Then, her sister walked in, with someone else’s phone around her neck, listening to another song, luckily she took what she needed and walked back out. Three different songs in one room- that never happened in my childhood. Sigh.

(and in all the noisey-ness, I had one of the kids walk into the bedroom that is closest to the kitchen and shut off the stereo in there, so that there'd be a little bit more peace. Granted all of this overlap of music only happened for a few minutes, but it still blew my mind.)