Remember the days when you used to do your homework to music so loud that you couldn’t hear your parents scream at you to turn it down? Well, that is what I am doing right now except it’s my kids who are yelling at me from down the hall “Dad! Do you mind? We’re trying to study here!”

I’m here in my own Man Cave/Office doing my job and just because I have got blaring out of my desk speakers Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry doesn’t mean that I am really hurting anybody. Am I?

Of course, I’m not. I am just a writer who is trying to do his job. Create another literary masterpiece that will be sold for millions of dollars so that I can finally afford the lifestyle I wish to be accustomed to; A Lifetime Membership to The Bacon of the Month Club. Yet, just because I have to have some sort of musical inspiration that involves the songs like Life’s Been Good by Joe Walsh or Walk This Way by Aerosmith or even Back in Black by AC/DC in order to put thoughts into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs to the point I am appearing on talk shows trying to defend myself for the stuff I wrote while under aforementioned musical influence.

Yet is it’s not always that kind of music my kids will complain about. I am also a lover of classical music as well. Of course, about 99 percent of the time, I don’t know the name of the stuff that I am listening to, but it’s like the art critic once said: “I don’t know what it is, but I like it.” Classical music has been instrumental (no pun intended) in keeping people from loitering and vandalizing public property. It’s true! Government officials and business owners have taken to tastefully pumping classical music out on their speakers in their public places and business which has led to a downturn in crime and vandalism in those affected areas. Could it be that classical music to street crime is just as deadly as garlic is to a non-sparkling vampire? Go check it out yourself online. Because as we all know, The Internet would never lie to us. Right? And with that being said I am discovering that music has an effect on people for both good and bad reasons.

For example, one day Mrs. Nickels and I were out doing something or other. Nothing really pressing, mind you, but I think it involved taking her mother to the emergency room, when next to us at the stop light, this car pulls up and his music is seriously blaring. Now before you think I am becoming a cranky old man, let me explain. This guy had a special set up for his vehicle. In fact, now that I think about it, it really wasn’t a car, per se, but more of a stereo system with wheels and an engine.

Allow me to explain.

This, and I am using the term loosely, “gentleman” had his speakers not only blaring inside of his vehicle, but he also had a monster speaker set up in his trunk that cranked out base so loud and with such intenseness that it was lifting up the back of his car all by itself. It was so loud that I couldn’t hear Mrs. Nickels’ mother in the back seat, which in retrospect was not a bad situation to be in, complain about my driving. (Note to self: In the future, take the scenic route when taking the mother-in-law to the hospital).

Ok, I get it. He loved his music and liked to listen to it loud. I can’t say that I blame him. I do the same thing when I am working. But why does it have to be so loud that it infringes on the usage of me using my own hearing organs to listen to other things? Now, to be honest with you, if it was just music he was listening to, I honestly wouldn’t be that upset. But it was THE LYRICS that got me upset.

Look, I’m a writer and I do respect creativity in almost all its forms, but the words that were blaring out of this guy’s speakers for everyone, including small children, to hear was extremely over the line! What this guy was listening to was, if I had to describe it, was a guy singing a love song to his girlfriend.

Except what he was signing, if you want to call it that, was some of the things he would like to do to his girlfriend and that’s when it got bad. Without going into graphic detail, what this guy proposed to do to his so-called “girlfriend”, who also had to be the world’s greatest contortionist, went again every known law of physics and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that this “lover of her soul” knew absolutely nothing about human anatomy. Trust me, if you heard what he wanted to put what, where, and how, in rapid succession, you too would have why his mother would let him kiss anybody with that mouth.

So, when the light turned green, this guy takes off and we are still hearing the sonic boom coming from his trunk two blocks away. It took another 20 minutes to get the ringing out of own ears, at which time I then was able to hear the “melodic sounds of my mother-in-law”.

Hence, I’ve come to the conclusion that music, outside of its apparent beauty to soothe one’s soul, also has an intrinsic quality of keeping our streets safe and clean, but also to remove toxic noises that sometimes are in the backseat of one’s car.