DUDE! WHERE'S MY TOLERANCE?	Share
	Lunchtime solitude torn asunder ...

It amazes me that I am no longer tolerant to the simplest of things. Race, creed, colour ... well I can handle that no problem as life is about accepting the differences in others and living together in peace & harmony ... but a group of teenage girls giggling and chatting at the next table to mine? Lawks!

In the space of two minutes, the conversation went from a normal, intelligible volume to something high-speed and hypersonic that I'm sure only dogs and bats could hear and the fastest supercomputers could decode. Louder ... faster ... and louder and faster ... until finally, well my ears couldn't stand it any longer, and I had to go finish my coffee whilst sitting on bikey outside of the services.

Was I like that as a teenage girl? Was my volume and speed of speaking directly proportional to the number of girls in our group? And how do they understand each other ... all speaking at the same time at such a volume? Texting, Instant Messenger-ing, Tweeting ... they have a lot to answer for. Whereas it would take me hours to hand-scrawl a letter back in the 80s, these days they're used to 'short bursts' of immediate communication. They'll be using high-speed asynchronous binary in the not too distant future if we're not careful.

Or maybe there's just something in the coffee? Does my skinny latte make my hearing so acute that I am magnetically repulsed by anything louder than a Starling sneezing during my lunchtime solitude?

I guess I could just be turning into a grumpy old woman ...

Until next time ...

STEFFI LEWIS

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Comments ...

Duncan from MK wrote ... "I know I'm a grumpy 'old' man, and Jen and I often complain of very similar situations. Maybe the world could do with a switch to decaf and maybe a hint of valium..."

Julie from Milton Keynes wrote ... "If i'm out anywhere other than a rock gig or rally tent, my senses get torn asunder by either teenagers squealing, the ordinary populace squawking or babies screaming. I think it's an age thing...I can't hear the tele or what the person sitting next to me is saying so well anymore but I can still pick up squeaks and squawks at 50 paces!"

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