Thursday, October 9, 2014

Click Clock



Unlike many graying creatures of the night my head must have mixed in 2 parts bat with the fat under my hat because as I get colder and older I seem to be hearing some sounds BETTER! No the television is still a mush of mumbles and breathless whispers but that is likely due more to my Pringle can amplified budget TV and the sorry state of  modern entertainment programming. Surprisingly now, high pitched clicks are becoming louder and yes, I drool even more uncontrollably at the sound of coins clacking together - which makes for some uncomfortable stares in Taco Bell’s all-tile echorest-room.

I’m not sure what’s changed but it seems now that all of the analog clocks in my house are screaming for their civil rights and ‘just want to be heard’.  Is this some kind of plot from the fancy new clock corporations to drive geezers to the brink and switch to their dinky blinky digital displays? If that’s the case, I’m determined to stand firm with my big noisy clocks, one finger in my ear and the other in a crass digital display of its own.

At Halloween I seem to hear perfectly fine, but oddly any other time of the year I have become almost completely deaf when anything else pounds on the drawbridge door asking for handouts. My wife handles my selective hearing by prefacing her requests with time-tested tricks to garner rapid attention. Drawing me in with comforting utterances beginning with ‘Ding Dong’ or ‘Pop Tart’ will get my most positive reaction, but if the wife’s pressed for time and wants me to fold-up and run like wet ink on a newspaper, she just happily snaps a 3-ring binder.

Other than the spouse, the good news is that most external distractions can be simply buried in the yard along with the bones of other telltale hearts and crafts of noisier times gone bye. But sadly when it comes to my OWN creaky joints and snapping flaps, they seem permanently attached to me so what do I do when skulking the stairs on an otherwise silent night. Clearly all I need to do is don’t whine and unwind those clickity clackity clocks and practice STOPPING time!