A few minutes ago, walking back from lunch, I started to cross the street when I heard the sound of a coin dropping. It wasn’t much but, as I turned, my eyes caught the heads of several other people turning, too. A woman dropped what appeared to be a dime.
The tinkling sound of a coin dropping on pavement is an attention-getter. It can be nothing more than a penny. Whatever the coin is, no one ignores the sound of it. It got me thinking about sounds again.
We are besieged by so many sounds that attract the most attention. People in New York City seldom turn to look when a fire engine, a police car or an ambulance comes screaming along the street.
When I’m in New York, I’m a New Yorker. I don’t turn either. Like the natives, I hardly hear a siren there.
At home in my little town in Connecticut, it’s different. The distant ringing of a police car brings me to my feet if I’m in bed.
It’s the quietest sounds that have the most effect on us, not the loudest. In the middle of the night, I can hear a dripping tap a hundred yards away though three closed doors. I’ve been hearing little creaking noises and sounds which my imagination turns into footsteps in the middle of the night for twenty-five years in our house. How come I never hear the sounds in the daytime
I’m quite clear in my mind what the good sounds are and what the bad sounds are.
I’ve turned against whistling, for instance. I used to think of it as the mark of a happy worker but lately I’ve been associating the whistler with a nervous person making compulsive noises.
The tapping, tapping, tapping of my typewriter as the keys hit the paper is a lovely sound to me. I often like the sound of what I write better than the looks of it.