A long time ago in a galaxy (not so) far away ...

A new planet is born. It’s a cosmic sort of place. One where R2-D2 commands authority over all sounds. Where chipmunk voices are often heard. Where males sound like females, and females sound like children. 

It’s a place where coffee grinders sound like helicopters landing overhead. Where a human blowing their nose sounds like several pigs in a pen. Where the shake of a water bottle produces tinkling sleigh balls! (Note to self: yes, it’s a rather lovely sound, but do not repeat that with the soft drinks. People still haven’t let you live down the ceiling mishap with the Coke last year.)

It’s a place where plastic bags sound like hailstones on a window. Acoustic pianos sound like xylophones.

Where pendulums tick. Even at night. When there’s supposed to be silence.

***

My foot tapped along to the music I was hearing. Two steady drumbeats! A snare drum … and another kind. Pretty cool! It sounded distant. I figured it was coming from outside. Something the neighbours were listening to.

After fifteen minutes of the same beat, I thought, ‘wow, they must really like this song!’

My eyes wandered over to the cuckoo clock, checking the time. Then my gaze came to rest on the pendulum. Wait … could it be? Sure enough, when I walked over to it, the drumbeats got louder. That whole time it had been the pendulum ticking!

I stood there grinning stupidly at the clock. How cool! Not only could I hear the pendulum, but I’d also been able to hear the distinction in the tones. Jase had it wrong … it didn’t go ‘tick, tick, tick, tick’ at all! It went ‘tick, tock, tick, tock’! (Hence the two different beats in my head!)

Well I didn’t mind at all. I liked the permanent music in the background – it was nice!

But I didn’t expect to hear it when I turned the processors off that night.

The ordinary tinnitus was there. Oh yes, no surprises. The ringing and the faint roaring, yes, welcome back. (Not really.) But after a few minutes, I started hearing additional noises in my head.

On the right, I heard my drumbeat. It had been there all day but hello?? Didn’t my brain realise I’d turned off the processor?? No. It decided to carry on. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock.

What’s more, the tinnitus in the left had a new friend too. That new chipmunk voice I’d been hearing all day, my own, was rambling away non-stop in my ear. What?! Shush! I had no idea what it was saying, but it was chattering away – much like what I do to Jase, really, and 90% of the time he has no idea what I’m saying either. Especially in the car – I don’t shut up. Most mornings he has to enforce a ‘Quiet Time’ rule to save his sanity.

Well, last night it all came back to haunt me.

While Jase smiled contentedly in his blissful slumber, enjoying his Quiet Time, I lay wide awake listening to my own rambling and the ticking of the clock.

I think it’s kind of neat that my brain felt it had to compensate for the silence and just went ahead and made stuff up but couldn’t it have given me less annoying sounds to fall asleep to? Rain on the window maybe? A lullaby or two? Nope.

When I told Jase about my tinnitus woes the next day he burst out laughing and became All Too Smug.

‘Welcome to my world!’


And, in keeping with the Star Wars theme, he delivered that again, Yoda-style: 'Welcome, in my world you are'.

Well, I'm living in some other galaxy at the moment, that's for sure. And I know this much about my new planet:  

It’s a place where karma is unleashed.