Local
grocery store has a bottle return area that I frequent.
I
don’t frequent it as in a few times a week or something crazy.
Instead, when I have bottles to return, this is normally where
I’m headed. The machines seem to run a bit more quickly, are kept
somewhat cleaner, and there is seldom anyone else waiting around
to use them.
But
it isn’t perfect.
Nearby
are a few vending machines. You know the types. Gumball for a
dime. Plastic egg with an eraser, sticker, or football helmet
for a quarter. Anything to get some spare change out of the hands
of a child. And, there is a claw machine.
For
some amazing reason, this claw machine has the most amazingly
annoying theme music playing. Hard to explain, but if you drove
an ice cream truck through the side of a circus tent into a calliope,
recorded the resulting collision of sound and somehow set it in
a loop… yeah. Clowns in a zoo playing with a bagpipe and keyboard,
that would be close.
For
some reason though, I can usually ignore the music when I’m returning
bottles. I don’t know why, I just can. It’s not that the music
isn’t playing. Believe me, it is. I simply manage to focus in
on the task at hand, get moving along with the project of placing
the bottles and cans into the appropriate machine, and the music
is background noise that isn’t registering.
But
every other time I walk into this store, I hear the music.
Have
you ever wondered why the volume in your house fluctuates during
the day?
We
don’t have neighbors living right on top of us. Street can have
traffic, but certainly isn’t busy. It’s a nice, pleasant, quiet
neighborhood. I tend to think that means the sounds in the house
should be the sounds in the house.
Our
television though… the right volume at 8am is too soft at 5pm
and far too loud at 4am. Nothing is truly different. Just seems
too high at one moment, too low at another, and just right at
another.
When
we first arrived in this house years ago, there were all sorts
of noises that I heard then but don’t hear now. I wasn’t used
to the way the wind echoed into the chimney or floors creaked.
The furnace kicking on was a new sound. That type of stuff.
I
can’t work without some noise playing. The radio or a bit of music
is good. Often, I’ll flip on a television. Thing is, I’m not really
paying attention to it, but it usually needs to be something familiar.
If I don’t know it, I start listening and get distracted. (Often
because I want to change it.) Strange thing though… I don’t know
where the middle ground of comfort and distraction exists.
Out
mowing the lawn, I often bring an old iPod with me. The thing
is, I never find myself paying too much attention to what I’m
mowing, so I kind of catch the flow of the music. But, I’m usually
paying too much attention to what I’m mowing to actually know
what song is playing. The music is there, but it’s not. I miss
it when it’s not playing, but don’t fully notice it when it is.
Weird,
right?
Furnace
just kicked on. Temperatures have been fighting to escape single-digits
as I write this, and will be battling to get into the teens all
weekend. But as many homeowners will likely agree, there are certain
sounds you hear once in a while, but mostly only notice when you
don’t hear them.
But
like the differing volumes on the television throughout the day,
I don’t know if I’ll ever make sense out of when I do hear something,
don’t hear something, or truly end up paying attention to the
sounds.