Ah, if only it were that simple. As you might have guessed, the truth is a bit different than appearance. About two weeks ago, I was jolted from attempts to sleep in by the very close proximity of a significantly loud and persistent wailing. I peeled off my eyeshades and stung my ochii with a lightwave battery. Leaning dangerously against the glass, I squinted away the dancing purple spots and became cognizant of the shapes coming into focus.

Like ants on candy, a colony of children swarmed in, on, around, and through a police van amid hysterical shrieks and joyful cries. One officer securely strapped himself into the drivers seat for safety (of either the van or his person) and declared over the loudspeaker, “God forbid any of you should find yourself in this police van another time!” Meanwhile, the other uniformed schmuck buzzed around like a chicken with its head cut off, chasing children in a vain effort to enforce his authority in organizing them into neat, orderly lines which they gleefully rejected.

As soon as each child had circulated through the politia ventricle a dozen times and the teachers’ conversations began to wind down, the surrogate parents got off their duffs and came to the rescue of the oppressed policemen long enough for them to whiz through the gates and take that blaring siren far away from me. Perchance to sleep…

Reality can be unkind. The same deejays (and I use that term lightly) from the other month were back at the school playing 10 very familiar songs (from the other month’s playlist) over and over again. And again. And over. Again. The incessant, infernal boom-boom racket with cheapened sexgrunt lyrics that couldn’t possibly motivate anyone past their first adolesent sexual experience.

I tell you whut, this nonsense plays bloody well everywhere. Going shopping for Prada? Boom, boom, boom. How about a fancy dining experience? Boom, boom, boom. Trip to the dentist? Boom, boom, boom. Visiting the cultural museum? Boom, boom, boom. It’s inescapable. All 7 of Romania’s radio stations compete with one another for who can play the same 5 songs the most times in a row. In fact, the only that stops the boom, boom, boom is the immature chattering of infantile disc jockeys who believe themselves to be entertaining in any way, shape, or form. This has become the land of dreams where Numa Numa is king.

Yes, well, there they were. The school officials had imported the DJs again to unleash their special brand of craptacular drubbings. I do have to admit the scheme was dastardly brililant. You see, as the school year draws to a close, the teachers are no doubt sick of the students and their increasing summer energy. What better way to burn off some of that excess enthusiasm then to wake up the nearly-dead senior citizens populating the concrete block apartments for miles around?

Crude, but effective. The kids danced and danced. And danced. Boom, boom, boom.

After a couple hours of dancing in the sunshine, the tedium of hearing the indistinguishable bubbleheaded technopop from DJ Project, Akcent, Fly Project and other flash-in-the-pan acts beause to take its toll of sucking the life from the kids’ very souls. Of course, this is the moment the adults had been waiting for and so they herded the little people back inside for afternoon lectures. I was left as collateral damage to sort out my inability to recapture lost sleep.

Of course, then about a week ago, another peaceful morning was interrupted by those same loudspeakers! The principle was outside commandeering the microphone before a crowd of many students and their parents. The same two dorks were sitting behind the turntables. They’d saved themselves the trouble of hauling too much music back and forth by opting to play only 5 of the songs the entire neighborhood had been listening to for what must be a month now.

The proud parents clapping away as the older kids walked up one by one to receive their graduation diplomas. Shaking the hand of some school busybody, posing for poze taken by the lunchlady, and generally keeping the whole procession crawling at the slowest possible pace so everyone with in hearing distance could marvel at the insane hipgyrational beats and inappropriate overtly sexual lyrics blasted into the ears of these 5 year old through 12 year old children. The atmosphere seemed to say: everyone congratulations on escaping into summer time, now get naked and bump uglies, kids! I might be the only one who cared, however.

Aham, dar de ce do you bring it up now, Domnule Romerican, sir?

That’s what I want to talk to you about, Skippy. You see, school is over. It’s summer time. No more classes. And a fella can finally put his boots under the bed and look forward to a little shuteye. After last night’s bout between Bucegi and Bürger, I was very much looking forward to a little sleeping in this morning to recharge my batteries for what looks to be a demanding weekend of ingestinal research. Yessir, just me lazying about, blissfully unaware of sunlight, and playing guerrilla war games of “steal the blankets from the person next to you.”

Then it hit me. Literally struck me. A piercing, throbbing aural devastation that shook my bed so much, I actually fell out and thought we were having the long awaited earthquake that’s been on the mind of Brasovians since 1990. Yet this rumbling seemed much more familiar despite my sleepy bumbling which nearly had me tumbling. A peek outside the window revealed that, for reasons that defy all logic known to man, the school was once again reconvened to re-celebrate graduation and awards a nineteenth bloody time!

One thing I cannot stand is all the noise, noise, noise!

Clapping parents, screaming little kids, yelling older kids, principal on the microphone, grandparents laughing, teachers policing. A madhouse, I tell you! A never-ending insane asylum the likes of which I have never seen and for which I was not feeling particularly receptive. Oh, but the creme de la creme was the wax spinning! Yes, my friends, this time the sorry excuses for djs has chosen only one song to play. An orchestral rendition of “We are the Champions” by Queen. In two flavors, straight acoustic or an acoustic dubbed over pulsating four-on-the-floor beats.

I now regret living near a school. I now rejoice that surely it must have been the last episode for some months. In any event, it’s taken me hours today just to console myself that I should be happy the kids seem mostly decent at their young age and glad I don’t live next to a high school of show-n-prove teenagers armed with spray paint.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 16th, 2006 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.