Noise Pollution

This morning I came to the realization that the time has come for me to acquire a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and have them permanently affixed to my head.

People are always surprised when I reveal that I’m a morning person. “But you’re so antisocial in the mornings,” they tell me.

Yes. That is because the still and the quiet of the morning is the reason I am a morning person. I live for the gentle, golden rays of dawn; the peacefulness of an early-morning drive, and the sleepy, pre-caffinated silence of my coworkers.

I love to wake while the world sleeps, to dress in the silent darkness and enjoy the few minutes of the day where I can believe that the world is vast and ripe for the picking; that life is a grand adventure and my potential is endless.

Then other people wake up and start polluting my world with their noise. While I sit at a stoplight, smile on my face, enjoying the soft blackness around me, some punk pulls up in a beat-up Caddy with blown-out speakers, blasting my delicate ears with sounds both musically and lyrically offensive.

The mood is ruined, but I quickly pull away as the light turns green and continue on my way to the office. Once there, I stop in the kitchen for my morning green tea. A rotund woman seated nearby is oblivious to my entrance, as she is fairly sucking face with her breakfast muffin, smacking loudly and licking her large lips with gusto.

My eye has not started twitching yet, so maybe my few remaining minutes of solitude can be salvaged. I walk back to my desk – formerly an office; now an open cubicle concept – and my very aggressive, very German manager is already on the phone with a vendor. Her laut, wütend tone carries through the open space. I have a front-row seat to her impassioned concerto, as I sit a mere three feet away.

I finally concede to myself that my morning is over. I brace myself for the continued influx of unwanted noise and human interaction. I didn’t get to recharge my energy sources today, but tomorrow is another day.

And maybe by tomorrow, my Bose headphones will have come in.

Authentically Aurora