All night, all day,
Angels watching over me, my Lord.All night, all day,Angels watching over me.Didn't know what hymn was playing just under my radar, but I knew the preschool classroom was becoming torture by cedar waxwing flock. Hummers of the preschool variety don't bother me much, but our class has two new stealth whistlers. The bird variety of whiny whistlers has been gathering by the dozens in the soapberry tree out back. Their thin, shrill sound alerts me to their presence.
Much as I love their handsome outlaw masks, the sound reminds me of my Grandmother's hearing aid shrieking for adjustment back in the early Sixties. We little grandkids would all do our best imitations of Munch's "Scream" to let Grandmother know she should stop drumming her fingernails on the kitchen table and fish around in her brassiere to find the Philco transistor hearing aid to adjust the volume control.
My mother, Effa Dale's daughter, was Marjorie Lois "Fritzi" Clark Mastalir. Fritzidid not like us to be "obnoxious", "belligerent", or "shrill" when we were kids. "Shrill" was not as likely to get us into trouble as the other two. Lately, though, shrill is really getting on my nerves.
I'm not, not, not getting hard of hearing. I can hear an index finger entering a nasal cavity at fifty feet.
Preschoolers who decline to ever speak audibly to adults manage to use loud, artificial, high-pitched voices to speak for plastic critters in the marine animal toy tub.
© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder
1 comment:
Oh, my, I am laughing! At a high-pitched silent scream frequency I fear you can hear even at this distance!
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