In meetings we used to worry about unsecured flies, dangling boogers, unruly tufts, badly tucked shirts, bits of tooth-lettuce, soup stains on our sleeves or collars.
There was also the occasional gurgling stomach—or coughing fit—that threw somebody off their game. But the worst perils were of the eye, not of the ear.
Not so here in the Covid Epoch.
These days ninety percent of what is apt to undermine your professional gravitas is auditory. Complaining children, clacking keyboards, coffee grinders, cell phone alerts, barking dogs, ringing doorbells, hissing cats, jackhammers, confused spouses, chirping birds, tea kettles, chain saws, garbage trucks, helicopters, sirens, lawn mowers, weed whackers and leaf blowers are what put us off our game and fill us with self-consciousness while we are supposed to be at the height of our professional game—undermining our efforts to show to colleagues, clients and superiors that we are adding value to their patented equations.
All the attention that goes into our backdrops—the shelves carefully lined with New York Times Book Review-quality books, the paintings of diversely complected children on our wall, the little professional awards tucked here and there, as if we had no other place to put them—it’s all for naught if it sounds like you’re broadcasting from a circus tent.
Which is just what happened to our friend G in Croton-on-Hudson this week. His PowerPoint presentation Tuesday interrupted by a synthesized calliope’s performance of “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
Even with windows firmly closed and central air running, the tune was easily picked up by his laptop’s microphone, and his colleagues—though they were well-behaved on the video conference itself—had some fun with him via the chat function and text message.
“Yr plan really pops!”
“All that for a penny?!”
“I’d like a strawberry shortcake and a toasted almond crunch, please.”
The truck stayed parked there, just up his street, playing its sugar-sweet tune twenty minutes, right through the bulk of his presentation.
When the meeting was over, G jumped on the Internet and looked up the village noise code, easily the most visited section of the municipal website, just ahead of the intricate garbage-collection and recycling schedule.
When the village’s biggest earners (and taxpayers) stopped going into the City and began working from their houses, a revision to the code had been pushed through—leaf blowers were prohibited during the workweek. Since April, residents and yard crews may only fire them up Saturdays and Sundays.
Anybody eager for a quiet weekend in the Hudson Valley should proceed a few exits past Croton’s.
G’s thought was that if a leaf-blower restriction had been made for his class of working-from-home residents, perhaps there would also be something regarding ice-cream trucks. There were no fresh revisions to the village noise code, but there was a relevant section in there already. Chapter 160, section four, paragraph J lists—in its “Enumeration of prohibited noises,”
“The use of any drum, bell, loudspeaker or other instrument or device for the purpose of attracting attention to any solicitation, performance, show or sale or display of merchandise by the creation of noise, except bells sounded by licensed mobile vendors, provided that the sound thereof is not audible more than 300 feet from said vehicle.”
“I’m taking action next time he comes back!” he says as we interview him on the sidewalk in front of his Tudor home.
It might be a she or a they, we point out.
“You could hear that horrible noise two football fields away, easy!” he says. “And where I really have them is with the bell provision. Only ‘bells sounded by licensed mobile vendors.’ That guy is using an electronic recording and an amplification system!”
It is an ice-cream truck, we point out. And the children are having a tough year.
“I’m not saying they can’t have ice cream,” he says. “Though the topic of any parent who lets their kid eat eight hundred calories of high fructose corn syrup and ultra-hydrogenated fat at three in the afternoon we’ll leave aside. But this ice-cream man is breaking the law twice-over and I’m going to demand to see his license.”
We ask him how he is going to do this. Will he confront the truck operator personally? Or call the police?
“Oh, I don’t want to bother the CroPo[1]. They have their hands full with the roving gangs of maskless middle-schoolers down at the Quickie Mart.
“My plan,” he continues, “is to have all my ducks in a row and just ask that he toe the line.”
We ask how he specifically means to broach the issue. Will he purchase a popsicle and then introduce himself? Will he bring a copy of the code with him?
“I do mean to ask what low-calorie offerings they have. I can always just get a Diet Coke. And then, yes, I’m going to ask for his email or cell number so I can send him a link to the eCode360 page.”
We ask if he has a plan in case things get contentious. If the truck’s current musical advertisement carries 600 feet, and will now be confined to a 300-foot radius, surely that will result in a significant reduction in customers, and income. And what if the operator does not own a bell? Might both these situations be emotionally combustible for the operator?
G has thought all this through and says to us, “Then I’ll go Rod McKuen on his ass.”
We ask if he means Rod McKuen, the Doc of Mawk.
“Yes, I have a song of his cued up on my iPhone, and I’ll have my Bluetooth speaker with me, and I’ll just hang out and enjoy my Diet Coke playing McKuen just as loudly as ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ till somebody else complains. But I’ll be breaking the law no more than they are.”
We ask what McKuen song and he replies “Silence Is Golden” and proceeds to sing the first verse for us,
“If I had a pistol to hold in my hand,
I’d hunt down and silence The Good Humour man
I’d pour sticky ice cream all over his wound
And stop him forever from playing his tune.”
After complimenting his singing voice, we tell him we have trouble believing such a song was written by Rod McKuen and that, at any rate, this is not a very good idea—it might be perceived as a threat—the kind of thing that the ice-cream person might be able to call the police about in their own right.
“Well,” says G, “let’s hope cooler heads prevail.”
We will monitor this situation and keep you posted.
We will also be giving a fresh ear to Rod McKuen’s songs.
[1] derives from Croton Police