The Noise of Summer

 

 

The noise of summer is rife with pleasantries.

Rife…now that’s an word that doesn’t work its way into my spoken vocabulary very often.

Rife….

But somehow when you sit and write, or at least when I sit and write, these types of words pop into my head.

Weird….

What’s even weirder is I barely wrote one sentence before I digressed off topic.

Just might be a new record.

Anyway….

The noise of summer is rife with pleasantries.

Crickets sing, birds chirp, bees buzz…and landscapers blast 18 million decibels of noise through the sweet summer air…seemingly 18 hours a day.

Okay…maybe I’m exaggerating.  It’s probably more like 10 hours a day.

Lawn mowers, blowers, trimmers, edgers…even the occasional tree stump grinder.

Noise, noise, noise….

I’ve never seen anyone more fascinated by a leaf blower than a landscaper.

Strapped to their backs like some sort of James Bond rocket pack, they use them for everything from actually blowing grass and leaves to blowing that pesky booger off their nose.

It’s a wonder tool.

This year we also had the benefit of someone in the neighborhood learning how to play the trumpet.

Yeah….

Keyword learning.

Everyone has probably had this experience at one time or another.

The scale goes up…

ba ba Ba BA BA BA BA BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA….

The scale goes down….

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

BA BA BABA Ba ba ba….

You know?

And there’s no discernible pattern as to when it will occur.

8 AM…Noon…8 PM.

The scale goes up…

ba ba Ba BA BA BA BA BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA….

The scale goes down….

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

BA BA BABA Ba ba ba….

And there’s nothing to be done about it.

It’s part of life with the windows open…part of the noise of summer.

Someone has to play the trumpet. Someone has to learn.

Because if no one played the trumpet, the marching band would sound pretty boring.

Especially the marching band that practiced all day, every Saturday in the park down the street…during the month July…all of July.

Especially that marching band.

Not that you could actually hear the trumpets, or anything else for that matter, mostly because there were about 3 separate drum units practicing separately yet equally, at the same time.

So you mostly only heard drumming…from about 10 AM to 4 PM.

Every Saturday…all of July.

It was kind of like those old jungle movies where after surviving a plane crash deep in the heart of darkness, the passengers slowly lose their minds from listening to the incessant drumming in the distance, signaling the local cannibal tribe was fixing to have you over for stew that evening.

So it was kind of like that, without the cannibals, or the stew…because that would be politically incorrect.

But it was all worth it in the end, because by the end of the month a dozen or so people in the neighborhood confessed to various crimes they’d committed since the turn of the last century.

So that was a plus.

But I’m not sure how accurate those confessions were since I found myself imagining committing certain crimes myself all through the month.

But hey…kids need to practice.

So you can’t complain, lest you be deemed to be anti-kid, let alone anti-marching band.

Then there’s the little two year old next door who’s practicing to be a three year old, preferably by this time next year.

His mom gives him encouragement…lots and lots of verbal encouragement…all day…every day.

Like when he lifts his left index finger without stopping to pick his nose.

“Good job! Such a good boy!”

It’s nice to hear that.

I didn’t get that kind of positive verbal reinforcement when I was growing up.  The only positive reinforcement I ever got when I was growing up was being allowed back in the house at night.

If I was able to sleep in my own house at night I knew I had a good day.

If I was able to sleep in my own bed at night I knew I had an even better day.

If I was able to sleep in my own house, in my own bed, without the dog at night I knew I had a great day.

And if my mom was practicing the trumpet...it didn’t get any better than that

But that’s the noise of summer.

Soon we’ll be closing up the windows and shutting out the noise for a lot of months to come.

Have to enjoy it while we can….

Right?

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