A few weeks ago my daughter sent me a video of her reading to her sweet baby boy and my four month old grandson, Joshua.  The book was Sandra Boynton’s board book Moo, Baa, La La La, in which she tells of the sounds that animals make.  As Erin read and made all of the requisite animal sounds for Joshua, he giggled and giggled…except with the meow of the cat.  Apparently at this tender young age, he is not impressed with the cat’s meow.  This Nana was thoroughly amused by Joshua’s sweet little baby laugh.  I was also moved as I heard my daughter sharing the love of reading with her little one just as I had done with her when she was that tiny, nearly twenty-seven years ago.

Fast forward to last weekend when these grandparents had our first all-by-ourselves babysitting job with this little guy.  I couldn’t arrive at his house empty handed so Weber and I went to Target and shopped the baby toy aisles.  I wasn’t sure what, if anything, Joshua was playing with at the moment, but I figured he’d grow into whatever we found.  I settled on a soft squishy little orange car.

Joshua loved it!

Since he had been so amused by Erin making the animal sounds from his book, I thought maybe he would be equally amused by me making car sounds for his squishy orange car.  “Vroom.  Vroom!  Beep!  Beep!”  We were both entertained for quite awhile by “our” new toy.  I can’t prove this, but I may have had more fun than the baby did. 🙂

After getting the little guy ready for bed, we sat on the couch and I gave him his bottle.  He fell asleep in my arms before finishing even half of it.  He was still and quiet…as was the squishy orange car, now parked on a blanket on the floor.  I couldn’t bear the thought of putting this cuddly little boy in his bed, so I sat on the couch in the quiet and held him.  The irony here is that in the midst of the peaceful quiet, I started thinking about sounds.

Joshua and I had both laughed at my” beep-beeps” as the car moved toward him.  Then I started thinking about all of the other beeps, those not associated with a precious baby and his toys, that I hear around me on a daily basis.  I wondered exactly how many times in the last month I had said to Weber, “What just beeped?” 

We have become a Pavlovian society, conditioned to react to beeps as if they are a mighty call to action.

I made a list of the beeps that I have heard in the last week.  I included only those heard in my house.  The number is scary! 

My beeps:

• The dishwasher when it is finished.
• The microwave
• The coffee pot
• The crock pot
• The rice cooker
• The alarm clock
• The dryer. (At least when it is done, our washer plays a catchy little tune that I often hear Weber humming on laundry day, rather than a beep.)
• The electronic locks on our exterior doors.
• Both the refrigerator and the freezer when the doors are not closed tightly
• The oven when it reaches the specified cooking temperature.  And it’s timer when I remember to set it.

This list doesn’t even take into consideration external beeping sounds like the garbage truck when it is backing out of our circle on Monday and Thursday mornings while I’m eating my breakfast.

Sadly, at our house there are often several of these beeping things in use simultaneously.  We have our own Symphony in Beep Major playing in what feels like a continuous loop.  No wonder we have to ask, “What just beeped?”

I’m not sure I like that fact that I have become conditioned this way.  Are we, as a society, so absorbed in multitasking that if we put a plate in the microwave to warm it we’ll forget about it in three minutes?  If so, we have serious issues…perhaps we are engaging in mindless eating if we forget that we were preparing food and our hunger pangs don’t remind us before the beep does.

As for the dishwasher…it has a light.  When the dishwasher is running, the light is on.  When the cycle is complete, the light is off.  Fairly simple visual cues.  Do I really need it to beep at me when it’s done?  And the reality is, at the point the dishwasher sounds its beep, the contents are way too hot to handle so I can’t do anything with them anyway.  If the dishwasher wants to issue a call to action, it ought to sound its beep only when the dishes have cooled enough to handle.

And the beeping coffee pot…As soon as Weber hears the gurgle of the last little bit of water dripping through the filter, he is there with his cup at the ready.  No beep is necessary to tell that boy when his coffee is ready!

Don’t get me wrong, I do not want to live in a world of total silence.  My heart aches for those who have no hearing, those who have never heard the music of Bach or Brahms, or the whisper of someone saying, “I love you,” or the giggles of their grandchild as his mama makes cow and sheep noises, or the “beep beep” of a squishy orange car.

I would, however, appreciate a little less unnecessary noise in my world so that the precious sounds around me are not always punctuated by incessant beep-beeps.  I wonder what such a day would sound like?  What would such a day feel like?

I may never know the answer to these questions because the first sound that I hear every single day is the beep-beep-beep-beep-beep of the alarm clock.  It’s my daily call to action.