Oh to be one of the lucky ones whose mind can ignore the cacophony of everyday life among a species that seems to value sound to silence. You know the ones. The ones who look strangely at you when you tell them the air conditioning blower is driving you crazy. “Just ignore it” they say. Lucky ones indeed.

In my present setting there are three televisions airing different programs at the same volumes and placed equidistant from my seat in the ‘break’ room. The dialogue of any may have well have been written in a foreign language. Oh queue they laugh track, those incoherent lines were apparently funny. The man on the TV to my left holds up a fish for the camera while Ross, on the TV behind me, mutters more incoherence. Queue laugh track. Funny again. This guy must be a riot. But so is Rachel Ray on the TV to my right. Oh pasta, that looks tasty. I’ve yet to touch my lunch. Among it all, the maintenance man eating lunch. His radio on full volume issuing urgent demands to fix the conveyer. He continues to stare at his phone. A problem for someone else. His ability to tune out the static, the shouting over machines from the other end, the pre and post beeps breaking through the madness of sound that is daytime television. The rest of the crew walks in. I take in the sound of simultaneous conversations and laugh tracks and radios and directions explaining the proper way to chop garlic. The sound of microwaves, the smell of questionable frozen meals being heated in a buzzing box. I hear the hepa filters running, keeping the air pure for all of us. Among it all, the vest on my back feels heavy. Monica is in crisis. Queue laugh track. I hear bottles fizzing as they’re opened. I hear crunching and smacking and chewing. I begin to hear two speaker phone conversations. Finally I get up to walk away. My lunch is over. Time to move to a different place. A different venue hearing different performances, seemingly imperceptible to others but all encompassing to me.