06 August 2007

Of car noise and a young hoon

We get a lot of car noise in the area near our apartment. Horns, revving engines and extremely loud (and bad) music are the main culprits. It's half the reason we're moving next month - to be somewhere quieter. The worst problem is that we're on a corner, which means we're next to a set of traffic lights. A typical New York City way of driving is with one hand on the horn to let the person in front know that the light changed to green almost 3/100ths of a second ago, and that they're obviously not paying attention. Some days, it drives me up the wall. You can watch them from the balcony sitting in their cars at a red light with their hand on the horn ready to hit it as soon as the light changes. Having a hire car at the moment, I know that getting off the lights as soon as they're green (which requires a bit of anticipation) is the best way to avoid the horn.

Yesterday, I heard the usual horn beeping, mainly managing to ignore it. This time, it was a short beep every second or so, but it didn't stop. Some idiot decided that it would be entertaining to continually keep tapping the horn. I figured they were trying to let somebody in a nearby apartment know that they were ready to be picked up. I was about to get up and have a look when it stopped.

About 30 seconds later, it started again. A short beep every second or so. By now, I was quite irritated, so I got up to have a look at what was going on. As always, there were cars sitting at the lights, but this was the same horn as before. I could see one car with a driver inside on the side of the road, but could also see that the he wasn't tapping the horn. I couldn't figure it out, which made it all the more irritating. Every now and then, when somebody's doing hitting the horn, a grumpy stare stops it, but I had nobody to share my grumpy stare with. This was ridiculous - it had been going for about 5 minutes.

I gave up and came back inside, only to see Kyan come out of the bedroom with the keys to my hire car and an enormous grin on his face. He was saying "I'm making Daddy's car noisy" and having a great time. It was right at that point that I realised that he'd been playing with my keys for the last 5 minutes, pressing the remote lock button. Every time he pressed the button, the car went beep. He was pleased as punch.

Unfortunately for me, I couldn't really abuse this young hoon, especially since he was being so cute. Fortunately for everyone else, this hoon's key privileges have been revoked!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love It

Anonymous said...

How cute is he!!! Gotta love children don't you!

Anonymous said...

And the next time he says"What's this button do Daddy?" I bet you will tell him.
Ded

Anonymous said...

Maybe I can get him a liitle car with central locking for his birthday. Make sure air horns are fitted as well.

Dave