White noise machine settings designed to keep socially anxious people up at night

These sounds are sure to fill you with existential dread

In case you haven’t heard, I’m writing on Yahoo! now. I feel like I’m fulfilling my destiny since I am one of the last people on Earth to actively use a Yahoo! e-mail account.

You can find my Yahoo Page here and follow along as I post stories old and new that will hopefully find their way in front of the eyes of some Yahoo! mail user in the Midwest plains who will discover me and change my life.

Here is a humor story I wrote several years ago and shared on Yahoo! today.

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White noise machine settings designed to keep socially anxious people up at night

Crowded Room of People Dressed in Formal Wear

The low hum of movers and shakers mingling and engaging in insipid small talk is the perfect soundscape for the socially anxious person wanting to lie in bed for hours and stare at the ceiling while reliving past humiliations at office parties and high school proms.

Remember that time you decided you were going to try to fit in so you loitered around groups of normal people chatting, a creepy smile plastered on your face, until they noticed you hovering and you ran away and hid in the corner?

If you didn’t before, you do now.

Gym Locker Room

The slamming of locker doors punctuates the persistent spray of the shower and creaking of benches, recalling distant memories of forced public nudity, and, even more hauntingly, terrifying horseplay.

When the towel snapping starts, are you supposed to respond in kind? Laugh boisterously and unleash a withering verbal retort, perhaps? If only there was an opportunity to game out possible scenarios in advance so that those irredeemably awkward moments of hesitation, stammering, and blushing could be avoided.

But at least now you can switch on this setting and think all night about the sick burns you could have wielded against the breezy extroverts in high school P.E. class.

Drive-Thru Restaurant

Anticipatory anxiety is the theme of this not-so-soothing soundscape featuring the rumble of car engines, crackly static of the drive-thru speaker, and periodic honking of the horn because some idiot (you) suddenly froze up when it was time to place his order.

Really?

How hard is it to say, “I’ll have a Number Three with fries and a Coke please?” It’s not like you didn’t practice saying it fifty times while you were waiting in line.

Oh well, at least now you’ll have plenty of time to contemplate your worthlessness while not sleeping.

Grocery Store Checkout Line

Just try to drift off to sleep as the beeping of the checkout scanner, the rattling of grocery cart wheels, and the awkward banter between the aloof teenage cashier and the dorky bagger who thinks he has a chance with her haunt your waking dreams.

Who needs sleep when instead you can spend those hours reliving that time the cashier sprung an unexpected question on you about the beer you were buying?

Remember?

She asked you if the beer was good and you replied, “Yes, plastic bags are fine,” because you’d been rehearsing that response the whole time you were shopping.

You are such an idiot. You don’t deserve sleep.

Call Center Hold Music

Nothing says sleepless nights quite like the pulsing tones of the electronic synthesizer. At first, your mind will be drawn to the repetitiveness of the track. You will think, “Where does the loop end and re-start?”

Soon enough, though, memories of your most embarrassing call center moments will begin to slide into your subconscious, populating a greatest-hits list of ineptitude.

Oh, here comes a good one now. Remember that time you stayed on hold with the cable company for forty-five minutes because you were going to threaten your way to a rate decrease?

Oh yes!

Then, when you finally got through, you stumbled your way through a scripted spiel about canceling your service, the representative responded “OK, go ahead,” and you panicked and hung up. A true classic!

Middle School Cafeteria

The scraping and screeching of metal chair legs on linoleum and the buzz of adolescent angst will certainly put you in the mood to stay up all night thinking about lunch period.

Images of your pre-pubescent self navigating the cafeteria minefield will overwhelm you, making your heart race as the remembered stench of rolls baking practically fills your adult bedroom.

As you toss and turn, you can’t stop picturing yourself striding with purpose around the cafeteria tables, clutching your brown paper bag, pretending to have somewhere to go, before finally ducking into the bathroom to wait for the sound of the school bell.

Crowded Chipotle Restaurant

The sound of the sizzling grill seems kind of soothing until the strained shouting of an anxious voice kicks in.

“No, I said a burrito,” the voice says over and over.

Oh, it’s you again.

And yes, the worker is getting your order wrong because your voice does not work like a normal person’s. Instead, in the crowded restaurant, it sounds as if you are speaking softly from the bottom of a well.

Best to just let it go and lie here thinking about it for a few hours. You wouldn’t want to make a scene.

Rainforest

This one is just frogs. Screeching frogs. Over and over and over.

Screech! Screech! Screech! Screech!

Good luck sleeping through that. Bet you think those frogs are judging you. Well, you’re right, they are.