You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
The sounds of silence.
I am alone today.
There is not a soul in the house. I can hear things I never have heard. Like a blind man using his other senses I am in touch with my surroundings like never before.
The air is wooshing above me somewhere in the rafters but its hiss is a constant drone of hypnotizing background noise.
I blow my nose and it echose against the wall. It does sound like a charging elephant like everyone says. I have to work on blowing my nose less violently, I think to myself.
The cat is walking on the carpet. I hear his paws hit the fibers with tiny, almost imperceptible rain pellets of pressure. He looks at me with that cat look that says; “Yeah, I am the cat and you are the stupid one who touches my waste product. What you looking at?”
The kids are not here so the TV is off. There is no shouting of sportscenter. There is no inappropriateness of the Family Guy. There is no, I shudder as I say this, Wife Swap, blaring through the home.
I wait for the massive air conditioner to kick on and shake the house, but Middle Tennessee is cool on this morning, and the mastodon of electrical cooling remains dormant.
I hear a plane over head, but it’s low rumble melts into the hiss in the rafters.
A bird’s chirp floats down the chimney landing like a feather in the ashes. I hear it for a second and it dissipates.
The sounds are barely audible, and my new senses amplify them, like Aqua Man telepathetically talking to an ocean squid.
The only sound, my fingers banging on these keys, like the perfect precussion of my brain. As I think the words, they explode on this white canvas before me.
RAT A TAT A TAT A BANG. !
Exclamation points are emphatically noisy.
I look out the window and see leaves rustling, but I cannot hear them. I see clouds moving but they move silently. Life is still on this morning.
There is an eerie calm around me and I wonder is this the way things are going to be?
By this time of day I would normally get at least a “Dad can I have money? Dad I need a ride. Dad I need to buy a prom dress.”
Nothing.
Just the hiss of bliss. A quiet solitude that only Superman knew in his ice crystal laden fortress of solitude.
Can this be real? I check my cell phone.
Yes, it’s on. Not even set to silent.
As Pink Floyd once cried; “Is there anybody out there?”
I yawn and hear my ear pop.
Suddenly my BlackBerry buzzes.
I pick it up.
Somebody named Alice wants to be my Facebook friend.
Who the hell is Alice I wonder. And why do I have so many Facebook friends. I don’t know Alice or her legion of doomsday followers.
Facebook is proving that we are connected by six degrees of separation. What that means is I don’t know Alice. But Alice knows a friend who has a friend who has a friend who knows me. And that is remarkable.
RAT A TAT TAT RAT BANG. EXCLAMATION MARK.
The cat meows. His box is not to his liking. He looks at me with that cat look.
“Hey human. You with little body hair and no tail for stabilization and cat like reflexes. I have excreted into this high walled sand trap and I need you to come and pick out the waste so I may go about my day which of course will include more crapping and napping.”
I feel a twinge of anger in the silence and loudly clap my hands.
The sound reverberates off the walls and the cat hunkers down, his hair suddenly spiking and his head on a little cat swivel.
His jungle reflexes take over as he scans the incessant hiss for danger.
“That’s to let you know I may not have much body hair, but I’m still the king of all I survey.”
The cat relaxes and saunters away, his paws tapping slightly on the wood floor.
Suddenly it is quiet again.
And that is crazy.