Quiet, Please!

I remember a time when you had to whisper in a doctor’s office, when the loudest sound you heard in the waiting room was the sound of a page turning in a magazine. Even the nurse wore rubber soles.

Go to any doctor’s office today and you will hear a cacophony of noise blasting out from radios and televisions. There is no peace anywhere anymore. We are tuned in, plugged in, tied in, turned on, hooked up, physically and mentally connected to audio and visual stimuli every moment of the day and night.

Remember muzak? That dull lull was boring, but I’ll take that any day over TV ads in the waiting room like the one about penile erectile dysfunction. I would rather hear a numbing rendition of Moon River than the violent poetics of rap music or songs with lyrics like: “I kissed a girl and I think I liked it.”

I can remember, as a child, waiting in the doctor’s office one day with my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother entered the office with white knuckles clutching her little black handbag and soon found comfort from another nervous old woman waiting to see the doctor. As the two spoke in their native Italian, I could see the tension leave their faces. By the time she was called in to see the doctor, my grandmother was smiling and telling my mother about Anna's late husband who came from my grandmother's village in Catania. "Humph," she added, "I have more grandchildren than she does."

The TV in the waiting room today has set up barriers to intimacy and friendly exchange between patients. Look around at the faces in any waiting room. No one smiles or nods when you enter the room. No one makes eye contact. No one speaks. It’s a drug, I tell you, all this noise and mindless visual stimuli, and I’m afraid that most people are already addicted. I have often reached up the wall to turn off the TV switch or lower the radio volume in a waiting room only to be met with icy stares from the waiting zombies.

Sometimes, when we are driving in the car, I like to be quiet: no radio, just the sound of the rubber meeting the road and the wind blowing through the windows. My son can’t sit in the car in silence longer than 10 minutes without asking, “Doesn’t the radio work in this car? Put something on, will you?”

My dentist recently updated his office. Each dental seat now has a flat screen TV inches away from your face. I ask to have it turned off when the dentist is working on me, because I’ve caught him pausing and glancing at the screen while he is supposed to be working on my mouth. The hygienist was disappointed one day as I asked her to turn off the TV when her soap opera was on. “Are you sure?” she asked me several times before she finally got the answer she wanted. After all, I want to keep the hygienist happy while she's holding that plaque removing hook in her hands.