I should clear something up.
It’s not that I should, or would, call the cops on the Party House most nights. See, in fact their music isn’t actually that loud. (Most nights.)
The problem is that it’s just loud enough.
Most people can and do sleep through the low-level bass rhythm they can barely make out above the ambient noises in their sleeping area. Most people have an ability to tune out (as it were) anything that isn’t a foreground annoyance. You’ll note that I’m not most people, however.
Let’s add it up: I’m a nervous, easily-startled person. I can’t not-listen to any kind of music, just due to funny mental hardwiring. I almost always have a difficult time getting to sleep. So, there I am, 11:30pm and unable to even get partway to slumberland because there’s a quiet but steady “bum-bum dum, bum-bum dum” coming from the apartment across the carpark.
I’m sure they think I’m some sort of annoying lunatic. I probably am, come to think on it. But I had to ask them to turn the bass down just a bit, nonetheless. Of course, by the time I get annoyed enough to get dressed again and stomp over there to have words with them… my adrenaline’s so high that I’m not sleeping for a while yet anyway, am I?
Cannot win. Just, cannot.
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3 responses to “Legacy Of A Nervous Childhood”
It’s not just the legacy of your childhood; I’m the same way and don’t have the nervous, easily-startled thing going on. It’s a hearing issue, not a temperament issue. (Actually I’m not entirely sure it’s a hearing issue, since I can feel low/bass sounds almost as much as I hear them.)
Living on 52nd St was fun, since it was a six-plex and I could hear the four-doors-down neighbor’s dryer running when I was trying to sleep! Also could hear the baby next door crying at any hour, the acousic guitar-playing in the three-doors-down household, and the yappy dogs of the far end (five-doors-down!) household.
We are cursed with parental ears.
See, this is part of why I love my air filter — it muffles most of the outside sounds. White noise machines are supposed to be good for that, too. I wonder if you could buy a CD or MP3 of white noise and play that all night? Or maybe nature sounds, like rain or the ocean? Of course, it’s possible you might end up focusing on that as a new annoyance… I guess you’d just have to try it to know if it would work.
Nah, me and The Rat will sneak in and wire up some Annoy-a-Trons with decibel meters attached – anytime it gets over XDb, they go off with something along the lines of “Do the neighbors a favor, and shut the fuck up already”
In a very polite voice.
At 210Db.
We’ll want to be away that weekend though…