deeples

February 28, 2006

Pocket music.

Filed under: Family,Life — Tags: , — denise @ 2:40 am

I was waiting for the elevator this morning and I had some change in my pocket and I was kind of moving it around in a randomly jingly way – and then I tried to make it sound more musical or jazzy and it began to sound worse and worse. Kind of like when someone is unknowingly drumming a beat on a table or something – and then they notice they are doing it (or that you are noticing it) and they try to throw in some ya-ta-tah-TAH riffs that make it all stupid and uncool. Especially the fake cymbal crash at the end…

This is an area in which old men excel. My grandfather could jingle his change in this really amazing melodic way that somehow managed to be non-annoying.  I’m easily annoyed by repetitive sounds – people drumming their fingers on something, people cracking/chewing their gum loudly, people who snap their pens on and off in a mind-numbing, skin-crawling, rage-inducing endless clickclickclickclickclickclickclick…..click…

Instead, when my grandfather would jingle his change is was sort of calming, like listening to rain on a window or the low whoosh of the clothes dryer.  My grandfather died about 5 years ago, now, but I still smile when I hear another random old man jingling his change – it’s a habit that I hope will make it’s mysterious transition to the next generation.  I’m not sure what triggers the change-jingling mechanism in men – but at some point the desire to jump up and touch things on the ceiling changes to harmonically moving the items in your pocket around…. how sad the day when all monetary transactions are performed with a card…

The art of jingling will be lost forever and generations of granddaughters will never know the simple joy of it.

Powered by WordPress

This site employs the Wavatars plugin by Shamus Young.