Loudness

Do you often find yourself giving the thumbs-up to those who finish the job with a big voice? We do. To be honest, we should quit doing so. Here's why.

We've been lately getting unhappy with the performance of my wife's beeper, which makes a less loud voice than before. Two days ago, we decided to buy a new beeper. We can't – and, in fact, we're not supposed to – have a lot of choices because the commercial market of beepers is shrinking with all the cellular telephones and iPhone models around. At the end of the day, the shopkeeper handed us a beeper, the same model of our original one; she told us that it was the one and only one beeper available in stock.

Good, fine, we thought. So it goes. We made the payment at the drop of a hat and got a new beeper. The voice of that new beeper was much louder, I swear. But, it soon came to our attention that the new beeper makes a loud bleep only when it receives the signal – and it rarely does so. Whew! What's the point of a loud beeper but with weak coverage? Well, that was foolish and we lived to regret it.

It goes without saying that we immediately returned the beeper and redeemed our adorable old beeper.

All right, that original beeper doesn't make a big noise, but it sounds much more adorable to both of us now.