Poosey Digest: Getting noticed

Greetings from Poosey.

I’d gathered a few friends for lunch at a nearby downtown square recently when suddenly the ice in our glasses began to rattle. Then the floor began vibrating and within seconds the plate glass in the café window shook with a violence that I thought was only confined to the West Coast earthquake zone, and before long we could no longer hear ourselves talk.

My friend, Marge, shouted, “Good God Almighty! It’s the end of the world!”

The gal on my right checked her iPhone and found that there was no end-of-world event on her schedule and calmed our fears by simply saying, “Motorcycles.” A group of otherwise mature men were circling the town square on their Harleys, Hondas, and hormones, revving their engines, kicking up a storm of dust in the street and a stream of conversation at our lunch table.

“Why do they do that?” I asked.

“Do what?” asked Marge.

“I can sort of understand why an otherwise mature man would want to take a ride with what’s left of his hair blowing in the wind, but why do they find it necessary to rev the engines?” My little group of gals looked clueless so I went on. “Would you walk into someone’s living room and start blowing a fog horn? I mean, do they realize how all that noise intrudes on the lives of the rest of us?”

“That’s exactly why they do it, Freida,” said Helen. “It’s the adult male version of belching loudly in kindergarten or wearing your pants too low when you’re a teenager. It’s a male thing. Haven’t you seen the male peacock spread his tail to get attention?” I glanced out the window of the restaurant as the herd of motorcyclists took a second lap around the square. None of them looked like peacocks. Graying turkey buzzards, maybe.

“It’s like North Korea,” said Mildred. You must realize that our friend Mildred is the queen of the non sequitur. Her logic often follows a pattern closely resembling that of a slug on the sidewalk, meandering this way and that. We did our usual trick of staring at her blankly until she saw fit to explain. “You know. North Korea. That little fellow Kim Jong Dong or whatever he’s called. If the world goes a week without noticing him then he threatens all out war on somebody.” Like much of what Mildred says, this nugget of insight slowly began to sink in and I for one began to see her point. “Men have to be noticed,” said Mildred. “Just like North Korea.”

“Women don’t have to be noticed?” I asked.

“Well, yes,” said Mildred, “but we don’t rev our engines.”

“Then what to we do?” I asked her.

“We go shopping.”

The rumble rats were making their third lap around the square and by this time the entire restaurant was a cacophony of shouts as harried waiters tried to take orders over the din outdoors.

Dingy Mildred chimed in with, “My cousin wears noise-muffling ear things when he rides.” I stared at her. “He purposely buys a motorcycle that roars then blocks out the roar with his own set of earmuffs?” She shrugged. “He says it’s like making iced tea. You boil it to make it hot, put in ice to make it cold, sugar to make it sweet then lemon to sour it.” I think I may have grunted, feigning understanding.

One of the things I miss most about our lunchtime chats is the need to guess and think. Used to be if we didn’t know an answer to something then we’d spend a delightful few minutes trying to figure it out. “Who was the president after Polk? …How did this street get its name?” Now we sit there while someone Googles the answer on her phone. While we talked about how decibel and testosterone levels might be related, Helen was busy asking her iPhone. She announced, “It says here that there are legal limits to noise levels on bikes coming out of the factory, but that riders often install their own louder mufflers after market.”

This was all getting too heady for me. The bikers were making a fourth lap around the square and my coffee had gone cold while I waited for the cup to stop shaking long enough to take a sip. As I drove home I came to my first stop sign. I put the car in neutral and revved the engine.

You ever ‘round Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.