The King Of Noise

You would probably think that as children like myself, I would look forward to my Dad coming home from work each day.

Unfortunately, that is not really the case.

For one thing, I am all grown up as a teenager and not a child, which means that 23.5hours of my day is spent on boring useless things like what is the root of x^2+2x+2 or memorizing the 700 hundred functions of liver.

For another, my dad is the king of noise.

Everyone and everything at home is scared of my Dad coming back home because he is 1000 decibels of noise personified. With Dad around, there is not a moment of peace.

My dad has two hand phones which rings alternatively and UNSTOPPABLY with the endless flow of messages and calls. The volume of the rings are put to the loudest, and the message alerts are not those single beep alerts that just shriek once and become silent. The phone will howl for 10 seconds or so telling my dad that there is a message, then finally become silent.

The point is that my dad is a very slow man.

It takes him 2 full minutes to realize that there is a phone call and another whole minute for him to realize that it is HIS phone call. By then one ear of mine would have gone deaf from his JARRING ring tone.

By the time he picks up, the person, however patient, would have hung up.

My dad would put his phone down very slowly and stare at it for a whole minute, as though wondering to himself if his phone really did ring in the first place.

Then he will slowly shuffle away. To the toilet perhaps.

Then the goddamned phone will start ringing all over again.

You would think that I am exaggerating. But you have no idea how terribly LOUD and JARRING the ringtones are. And how patient my Dad's callers are to be able to ring for 30 seconds non-stop.

 

It is not only his handphones that are noisy.

I suspect that my Dad is hard of hearing, which is the best explanation for why his turns on the telly to extreme loud volumes.

After countless hours of unbearable noise and din, the house would finally quieten down.

Then I heard a low rumble in the distance.

Was it going to rain? Was that the low rumble of thunder in the far off horizon where the sky meets the sea?

No it was not.

It was my dad, snoring away peacefully in his deep sleep.


My Dad, the King of Noise, makes noise even when asleep.