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!
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