Background: The buses in Oxford operate on the standard press-button-to-request-stop principle. When the button is pressed you could either get a 'trrrring' bell-ringing sound or a 'beeeep', and the loudness of this varies greatly.
The other day, this girl I know rode the bus home with me. The bus made 10 or so stops along the way, and for each of them, the button was pressed and the 'beep' followed. The first time it happened after we got on, she went "how annoying, why is it so loud?!" I shrugged and said I had never noticed it to be particularly loud or particularly annoying. The second time it went off, she was more than mildly annoyed and was frowning as if the sound had hurt her physically. And so it went on, with every stop the bus made. She was fuming and had worked herself up into a frenzy, covering her ears and grumbling ad infinitum about how bad the sound was and that it shouldn't be there at all because 'surely everyone can read the sign that says STOPPING!'
It fascinated me then, how something so small could get someone so wound up. The more I think about it, I find that we're all like that - extremely relaxed and unaffected by some things, horribly bothered and worked up about others.
So, while I can totally shut out bus bells, I absolutely must have the caps put back onto bottles. While Dot is markedly indifferent to the idea of replacing caps on bottles, he blows a fuse when I don't get the scraps off the plates before putting them into the dishwasher.
Go on, tell us what washes over you and what soaks you to the bone and makes you raving mad.
Posts
