Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Taming the Inner Beast

After a week off for holidays and east coast family-go-rounding, today I was back at work in my hellish little cube. The first thing I did once I got myself settled was to grab my iPod and put on the headphones. It's really not that I'm anti-social. It's more a self-defense mechanism against my coworkers who talk to each other as if they were all yelling at each other from the Swiss Alps. My downstairs work environment is like one never ending Ricola commercial.

I've never been one to work well in total silence. My brain quickly gets very antsy and in its boredom, switches over to an unbelievably inane conversation. A conversation one might have with, say, a three year old who doesn't ever shut up.

Sure is quiet in here.

Yes, it sure is quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet.

I'm hungry.

What are you doing?

Don't you think it's quiet? Should we go see what's going on?

Are you thirsty? I am.

Do you think it was this quiet yesterday?

Yessirree.....Quiet. Do you think it's quiet?

One very important reason that I need to have some sort of noise going on in the background of my life is to placate my inner three year old. It's like in the olden days when a parent would park their child in front of the TV sets at Sears while they did a little shopping (and by olden days, I mean those days when it was perfectly safe to sit in front of the TVs at Sears while your parents did some shopping). With my iPod, radio or television providing a pleasant diversion, the three-year old is happily occupied so the adult can get some work done. Now, if you ask me what I'm listening to, most likely I'll tell you I don't know. And it's true. The adult isn't paying one bit of attention to the noise. The adult is simply thankful that the three year old is busy and quiet.

Every once in awhile, though, the iPod shuffle hits the jackpot, the three year old jumps for joy and the adult cannot help but smile, because what adult cannot help but do a little head bob to the wonderfully infectious Shiny, Happy People?



Especially when it happily reminds the inner three year old of a certain Furry, Happy Monsters.



It's better than TV at Sears.

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