Inside Doug's Head

In rural areas, the source of the perpetual chirping noise is crickets. As annoying as that sound is, the New York City equivalent is the constant din of car horns. The drivers, here, honk at everything, and I’m not talking about happy eighth-note, “Hey! How you doing?” kind of honks, either. No, these are angry-whole note honks, or, as I like to call them, a-whole honks. Honk. What a stupid word. What’s a better word for honk? It reminds me of a goose, and I don’t like them; they are tasty, but their ugly, smelly faces bug me. Beep sounds too happy, and honk just doesn’t convey the appropriate degree of annoyingness.

I witnessed an event the other day. A mother was crossing the street at the walk light while holding the hand of her young daughter. A driver, who was turning left, nearly ran over the two of them and then stopped to honk the horn at her. I don’t know what his point was. She had the right of way, but he had the horn. For a place where everyone is afraid of getting sued, people are very reckless.

You can hear them, late at night, honking at one another. They sound like an insect mating routine. Two honks, and then a pause, followed by a longer honk. In reply, a honk, a pause, then two more. Fireflies do the same thing, except they are decent enough to quietly blink-out their messages of horniness rather than loudly announcing them to the world.

The wind blew a tree down last week, blocking the street my house is on. The cars stopped and immediately began honking at it, like the noise would make it move. I don’t know, maybe the drivers thought there were people hiding along the side of the road who were supposed to come out and remove the obstruction on a signal from the horn . Dumb.

In order to combat the horn abuse outside of my bedroom window, I am making new street signs to put up around the neighborhood.

It may, however, result in actually making the problem worse. There might be more pedophiles out there than rude people. Now, there’s a scary thought indeed.

-DG.