adrian is rad

My mom was telling me this weekend that my parents’ new house is quiet. This astounds me because this is compared to Candlewood[1]. I can’t imagine a quieter place. I remember going into the basement during a break from college and my ears and head hurt it was so quiet. I was so used to four or six or eight computers humming in any room, people yelling, laughing, chatting, arguing, snoring in deep sleep, the belabored breathing of a cold that just won’t go away, the music playing, someone drumming or singing or playing guitar, the street cleaners slowly making their way up the street, the shovels of the snowplows scraping along the street in winter, the garbage trucks coming to empty the dumpster, the cars whizzing past or honking if they weren’t, the drunken college kids yelling or laughing on their walk home from whatever bar or pub, the planes making their way out of Logan. I was so used to a constant din, a background of noise that this silence was shocking.

If Double Eagle[2] is quieter than that, I may have a hard time. I’ll be sure to bring my laptop and music to play.

[1],[2] Through lots of moving, business relationships, and a spread out set of relations, my family has need to refer to a number of different houses. We invariably choose the street name. “Which house was that?” “Smits Road”. “Where was it that Wolfgang visited?” “General Allen Lane”. An odd case of synecdoche. The Candlewood house was always just the “house” but now that my parents have moved away, it’s taking on ‘Candlewood”.

Our cars also had an odd nomenclature: their color. “We’ll take the green car.” “Which car can I take to Andy’s house?” “Take the red car. Mom needs the blue car.” Somehow every car we’ve purchased since the late 80s has been a mutually exclusive color to all that came before. My family is rife with synecdoche.