Yet another sign that I am making the passage to curmudgeonhood …
Kids in packs annoy and, even sometimes I will admit, frighten me a little. You know what I am talking about. My parents would have called them hoodlums. They gather in groups like birds on a wire in front of stores and in malls. In parking lots they smoke and drink and swear at you when you go by. Skateboarders are the worst, making a sound like a snowplow coming straight at you.
It can’t be good for business. I know I will avoid a place that has a gaggle of teens in front and I am sure many of you do the same. However, there’s not much a storeowner can legally do. Chase them away, and they only reappear. Call the cops and they will tell you it’s legal for teenagers to be anywhere they please. Use an Ak 47 on them and you go to jail.
But thanks to a forward thinking man named Howard in jolly old England we have a winner of solution.
Howard Stapleton has invented something he calls the Mosquito. The web site explains: The MOSQUITO Unit Uses Complex High Frequency Sound To Chase Away Those Annoying Teenagers!!!
It seems that what I would consider one of the problems of getting to be a curmudgeon - losing high frequency hearing - turns out to be a benefit. We old farts can’t hear the thing, but those young whippersnappers can hear the tones just fine. And they drive them away.
It’s a little pricey - about $1,200 dollars not including installation - but I bet they sell boatloads of them.
Of course this all got to me thinking … what if we had Mosquito units that had the ability to chase away other annoying life forms?
Have one at your desk at work tuned to anti-boss. It would make a noise only bosses can hear like, say, a union being proposed. Watch the boss bat at his ears and turn tail fast.
You could have one installed in your phone for when telemarketers call. It would make a sound only they could hear … maybe a reminder about the do not call list. Click! - and they hang up before you can.
In downtown Wilkes-Barre we could have a unit to chase away hookers. It would emit sounds like a Nun approaching.
Well maybe we would have to work on that one.
But then again I could be wrong…
Author Jim Rising Publication Times Leader (special to the Weekender) Date 15 March 2006 Linkwww.timesleader.com
