Well, what did you think was going to happen?

Prepare to smack yourself in the forehead: go read this, then come back.

Done?

Good.

I’m only concerned with the first half of the article, namely the woman who lodged this complaint:

“…the event was too noisy, there were too many people playing bagpipes and the park was far too busy.”

Um, hello? She was at the World Pipe Band Championship. Stands to reason there would be a few (thousand) people playing bagpipes (which are pretty loud), and a few (tens of thousands) of people attending and spectating.

Moreover, she had to buy a ticket to get it. Even if she didn’t know in advance what the event was, surely someone at the gate would have told her. The “World Championship” part might clue some people in; indeed, at the World Championship of anything you will probably find a lot of people, from all over the world, participating in the very activity identified in the name of the event.

So I have to wonder: what was she expecting would happen? I’ll have you know that I once attended an opera, and though it’s probably not an experience I’ll repeat, I didn’t go complaining that there were too many people wearing costumes and singing loudly. It was pretty much what I expected to find at the opera.

I also have to entertain the idea that this complaint never actually occurred, and the anecdote was invented by the author of the article to create a clever hook at the expense of a person who doesn’t exist. In fact, I’m going to go with that, because I really hope there aren’t really people dumb enough to lodge a complaint like that. If you know for certain that this event happened and this woman actually exists, please don’t tell me, because I have to maintain some tiny shred of faith in the human race.