OPINION: Different strokes for boom box binges

Sep. 19—After Grant Crawford produced his series on obsolete objects, I had learned something new. Not only do older gentlemen hanker for flip phones, but music aficionados have an emotional attachment to boom, or jam, boxes.

My husband used to have one, and it had a "cassette deck" in it. He would take it outside to provide background noise while he pretended to work on vehicles or the lawn. Sometimes it was opera (he's Italian, you know), sometimes rock 'n' roll, and sometimes jazz, but always with the volume cranked up to ensure he had only a few years of hearing left. He seems to be deaf already, but he employs the trait known as "selective hearing." Husbands are miraculously able to filter out the precise range and tone of a nagging wife, but can hear the smartphone ring a quarter mile away when the person on the other end is a fraternity brother organizing a golf game.

When it comes to most people and their music, the louder, the better. I don't know anyone whose eardrums have burst due to blaring speakers, but the threat — "Turn that down before you go deaf!" — has been employed by parents for ages to get teens to lower the volume. It's from the same playbook as other parental platitudes, like, "If you don't stop doing that, you'll go blind."

I'd rather swim laps at the NSU natatorium in silence, but I've gotten used to the speakers they installed at the "deep end" of the pool. The entire Fit is privy to the same tune loops, and the selection varies. Some days — the best days — it's classic rock. Sometimes it's New Age or grunge, which is OK as well. The hip-hop isn't that hot, but it's better than today's pop music; I've described it as sounding like teenagers grunting through a synthesizer tube. It has no melody I can discern — but then again, neither did Van Halen.

I'm assuming the powers that be at NSU threw up their hands in resignation, because back in the day — before the 2-1/2-year remodeling project — there was always some kid who set up a boom box and a Dasani bottle full of vodka at one end of the pool. Such kids eschewed the sleek Speedo's and wore swim trunks, which is a sure sign that the guy with the "junk trunks" has no clue what he's doing. They usually dog-paddled, flailing and floundering, until they managed a lap, then took a sip, and started the process again.

There were also jokers with boom boxes at the Muskogee Swim and Fit, where I went two or three mornings a week at 5:30 while the NSU pool was closed. It was during this period that a deer almost destroyed our truck on the patch of highway near Woodall. Other bad things happened, too, but one of the worst was the music preferred by a certain lifeguard. That is, if you don't count the fat, hairy man who sat naked and sweaty in the sauna, awaiting the arrival of hapless females.

I had several bad workouts because of that one lifeguard. Most of them were accommodating, if not particularly alert, though none were as friendly as the NSU crew. But this dude — like folks who want to ram their own religions, lifestyles or politics down your throat — insisted on playing his jam box at maximum volume. Even if he chose better music — say, the Stones or Aerosmith — I would have still found it disconcerting, because of the reverb when you're underwater. Have you ever tried swimming laps to Tim McGraw or Blake Shelton?

I tried ratting the kid out to the front desk people, and they asked him to turn it down. He did, but when they were out of earshot, he cranked it back up. I tattled again, and the response from a defiant young woman who claimed to be the "manager on duty" was that "people demanded that we play music." Naturally I had to go about exposing her fib; I interviewed all 12 people who were in the natatorium at the time, and though two said the music didn't bother them, the rest found it a nuisance.

In hindsight, I can see the passive-aggressive lifeguard was a blessing; he was priming me for what would come later at NSU, where — I've been told — other swimmers demanded music. Although most of the women in the aerobics class beg to differ, I'm not going to complain, because I'm used to it now. Except on the days when they pipe in country 'n' western. Sad songs about drinking and cheating, and fierce anthems about being a proud American just itching to kick some *ss, are not conducive to productive laps.

Not everyone would agree. Years ago, when my son was a freshman at Tahlequah High School and a member of Harvey Price's Orange Express Marching Band, Chris and I were sitting in the bleachers before a game, watching the pom squad practice. NSU had just gotten a new sound system, and the girls were practicing with a hip-hop piece blasting at full throttle. We were sitting there watching with other band parents.

A little ways over were members of the Quarterback Club, who didn't want to hang with the band parents any more than their jockey offspring wanted to hang with the band nerds. They were in their matching jackets; most of the moms were blonde, and the dads, in boots and cowboy hats. We all had one thing in common: We didn't much care for the music. One of the dads, who had just arrived and settled into his seat, suddenly and indignantly hollered: "Well, what the hell is THIS sh*t? How 'bout some Travis Tritt? Clint Black?"

Somehow, I didn't think C&W went with dancing teens any more than it does with swimming crones. But you never know.