The beeps are out to get me.
It sounds paranoid
– but it’s true. I’m surrounded by beeps, and they are slowly
driving me insane. OK, MORE insane than usual.
You know what I’m talking about. That annoying little BEEP BEEP
noise that comes from everywhere, everyone and everything these
days. It’s making me crazy. Beeping crazy, as a matter of fact.
The beeps are out to get me.
It sounds paranoid – but it’s true. I’m surrounded by beeps, and they are slowly driving me insane. OK, MORE insane than usual.
You know what I’m talking about. That annoying little BEEP BEEP noise that comes from everywhere, everyone and everything these days. It’s making me crazy. Beeping crazy, as a matter of fact.
I’m sure the person who invented the beep – who, by the way, wishes to remain anonymous for fear of death threats – didn’t really mean for an innocent little beep to make people insane. I’m sure the BEEP BEEP started as an innocuous little noise that wouldn’t bother anyone.
But now it’s making me nuts. Crazy. Loco. And that’s because nowadays, everything beeps. I’m not kidding. Your kids beep. You beep. Heck, even the TV beeps. Your car beeps. Your spouse beeps. The guy down the street who doesn’t mow his lawn enough in the summer beeps.
We’re an entire country of beepers.
It wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, we were a peaceful, non-beeping nation. I’m not sure when the beep was invented, but I think it had something to do with a car. Specifically a car’s horn. Oh, sure, horns honk. But if you listen to the very first generation of cars, you’ll find that they beeped. And it was all downhill from the very first beep of the very first horn.
You see, after that, alarm clocks started beeping. Nobody suspected that the lowly alarm clock, which most people throw across the room at the very first beep anyway, would cause such a beeping revolution.
But then came the cheap, programmable, plastic watch which you could set for multiple beepings – I mean, alarms – every day, and voilá! It was a beeping nightmare.
People couldn’t get enough of their beeps. If your arm beeped 20 times a day, you were the coolest person ever. People heard your beeps and assumed you were important. Each beep meant something. You might need to attend a meeting. Or overthrow a third-world country. Or make a call to the President. If you beeped, you were someone.
And then came personal computers. With the first personal computers, there came the first idiots trying to operate them. And suddenly beeping was bad. Very bad. That’s because every time you did something wrong with the computer, it beeped at you. And computers beeped a lot. So offices across the country were filled with the sounds of beeping computers and people swearing back at them – words that would have been beeped, by the way, had they been on network TV.
But the beeps were there, and they weren’t going away.
Pretty soon, each time a large truck backed up, it beeped at you. It was an angry, “get the heck out of my way” kind of beep. A scary beep. And then passenger cars got into the beep craze. People would be walking through a parking lot, only to be assaulted by 10 or 15 cars, trying to back out of parking spaces, beeping all the way.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, cars started being fitted with alarms. And the alarms beeped. Loud. And people weren’t too bright about their alarms, either.
Every day, in every parking lot you could find at least one person, stuck in their car, while the alarm beeped uncontrollably and the person locked inside sobbed until AAA came to release them from their beeping prison.
And the beeps don’t stop there. Even our phones beep. If we want to leave a message for someone, we wait for the beep. If a message is on our machine, it beeps until we listen to it. It’s enough to drive you stark, raving, beeping mad.
Because if you aren’t crazy enough from the alarm clock, your watch, the car or the phone, now the signal light at a crosswalk beeps. Oh, sure the street engineers call it a “chirp.” But they lie. It’s a beep disguised as a chirp. And let’s not even mention cash registers. Let’s just say that each beep costs you money.
But I have a plan. I want to be beep-free by 2008. No horns beeping. No alarms beeping. Just my little beep-free life and me. I’ve started by tossing out the old alarm clock and replacing it with an iPod alarm clock. Now I awaken to the sounds of music – not beeping. It’s not much, but it’s a start. No beeping kidding.
