ANOTHER MIDSUMMER'S EVE

Lately, for no particularly good reason that I can think of, Mozart's Requiem Mass fascinates me. Rex Tremende Majestatis rides again on the phonograph. Add to this the rat-tat-tat of a dot-matrix printer in the next room, a television set in another and an open second floor window overlooking a typical street scene in Toronto's Little Italy on a warm Saturday night. It is 9:00PM and all's well, but the sound effects from the street are interesting. A group of 5 boys are in the street playing baseball and ducking traffic or vice versa.
Nothing about them is remarkable or unusual. This is everyday-normal standard operating procedure. As at least every other word is, of course, as a matter of coarse, the most remarkable obscenity, it will not be possible to record what is probably just another garden-variety baseball conversation. !&%$# this. +*&!?@^ that.
The significance of all this, when all is said and done, no doubt, is not in what was said, nor even in what was done, rather, in who said the most, the loudest, as near as I can tell. Here we have 6,7,and 8 year-olds communicating with enthusiasm what must be to them, I imagine, utterly incomprehensible gibberish, which nonetheless obtains the desired results. Periodically as the din approaches crescendo ultimo, understandably, no doubt, as in any baboon troop, the baseball players succeed in attracting the attention of one of the neighborhood's dominant males. They gape in awe, as old grey-beard meanders over, studiously stares-down the biggest loud-mouth in the group and swaggers back to his own front-porch.
But for another formidable and potent weapon in this noise war the neighborhood could have enjoyed peace and quiet, for maybe two minutes. Some of the older adolescents are even now experimenting with noise propulsion. These things sound like a rock concert, but they look more like cars. Accelerators are superfluous, with windows down, speed control is effected with the volume knob on the radio, no doubt.
As yet another generation of used car salesmen, hamburger cooks and corporate executives hones its socializing skills, emulates its semi-literate role models and prepares for life at the centre of the bell-shaped curve, I can't help but reflect that any young potential Mensans, in the general vicinity, are, no doubt, of course, if memory serves, at home, probably reading a book.

This item by George Noviss was included in Montage (Toronto Mensa) September 1985

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