What the %*beep^*
There is something so jarring about a beep. I'm sure there are good things but at this moment I can't remember them. Help!
The giant timer on the wall reads 000 and beeps. I jump off the foam block that most people use to exercise and I use to rest. And by jump I mean groan and lumber. I don’t know what my face looks like but clearly not that great.
“Do you have PTSD from beeps?” Asks my trainer, laughing at me like usual.
I begin to cue up a speech about the significance of PTSD and how we shouldn’t just throw those letters around but I am doing a wall sit so I don’t talk right away. Exercise…the only thing that keeps me silent. It gives me a moment to think about something other than my quads which feel like they have mini stomachs filled with curdled milk.
It gives me a moment to think about something other than my quads which feel like they have mini stomachs filled with curdled milk.
“Actually yes. When H was born she was in the NICU for two weeks. You have never heard so many beeps as in the NICU.” (In case you are wondering old stories have been approved by the kids just not anything recent or relevant.)
I am in the NICU, plastic incubator with gloved holes to touch her, baby sunglasses to save her eyes from UV light. The smells of sanitizer before it was ubiquitous, and the beeping. From her, from the other babies who we have to pretend not to see, and from places in the dark where it is one or two nurses per child. On the first day when the beeps set the pace of my heart it upset me when the nurses strolled over to us and cleared the monitor without a word. But one time the nurses ran over and I knew I would never be irritated by a sloth paced nurse again.
So monitor beeping, car reverse you are going to hit something beeping, alarm beeping, fridge door left open beeping, time to fold the laundry beeping, total mystery beeping. All on the spectrum from irritating to terrifying.
We went to an open house this weekend to try to imagine a more urban life (we live in Denver proper but it still feels suburban) and the house was amazing. But it had a smoke alarm beeping because it wanted a battery. Open house fail. Imagining myself in a low maintenance new build does not include searching for invisible smoke detectors.
At our house they hide. When we finally find them we remove them from the hard wiring and take out their batteries and somehow through some sort of black magic they continue beeping. For many months we had a smoke detector wrapped in a towel shoved in the back of a bathroom cabinet behind the knee and elbow braces for additional sound dampening. Scientists need to harness this perpetual power and all will be well with the planet.
This pandemic (not an optimistic way to phrase it, apologies) we were stuck in the house with a smoke detector that needed new batteries. We stood under each one waiting for the beep. It traveled around the house like an itch you can’t catch on your back. It sounded like it was in the room where H was watching videos about some war. When we stood completely still in her “classroom” it was silent, winning an unwelcome game of hide and seek.
Desperate, we told to kids we needed to spread out around the house to triangulate (or the square version of that.)
“Let me just finish this chapter” H said.
I watched her screen to see what a war against something other than a smoke detector looks like. And then there was a beep. The *&beeping)^% video. It was her video that was beeping. Get it? The video was beeping. Not the smoke detector. The. Video. Another problem with remote schooling.
There are lots of bad beeps I’m sure. Here are some good beeps: nachos ready in the microwave, the signal for the end of the wall sit, the steady sound of a heart-rate monitor that bring no nurses at all.
Tell me your bad beeps and good beeps please.