Beech Tree News Network

Although both my daughters would vehemently deny it, I think I hear pretty well for someone my age; and I hear remarkably well on sleepless nights.  I hear the tank on the commode leak and refill; I hear possums snacking on left-over cat food; and I hear the creak of the hinges on the back door that someone forgot to latch when coming into the house through the utility room.
    My granddaughter’s potty chair has become a particularly annoying sound that gets me out of bed on sleepless nights.  It is one of those that makes celebratory sounds when a toddler does his or her business.  It has been on the blink of late—possibly even possessed—and it celebrates at odd intervals during the night.  The only way to stop it is to close the lid and stomp on it.  Sometimes, even that doesn’t shut it up and more drastic measures have to be taken.  A few nights ago, after a maddening succession of “Yay! Yay! Yay!,” I stumbled into the bathroom and threw it into the linen closet.  An hour later, I lay awake listening to its muffled sounds, wondering if it’s possible to buy a Taser online. 
    My husband, Garey, sleeps through all of those sounds.  I’ve always believed it’s because he doesn’t hear so well, due to an incident on an indoor firing range while he was in the army.  That and he snores loud enough to drown out any competing noise around him.  There have been times when his snoring has forced me to sleep on the futon in the next room, and it has driven me to even more remote locations like the living room sofa or the stack of hay in the far left corner of the barn loft.
    When I rise from one of those nights looking worse for the wear, Garey informs me that he slept like a baby.  He often insinuates that I let too many little things bother me.  He says I’m like the Princess and the Pea, the children’s story about discovering the true identity of a princess by putting a small pea under her large mattress.  (If the girl can’t sleep because of the irritation of the pea, she is a true princess.)  I am a true princess, I tell him, and he’s lucky to have me.
    A few years ago, Garey decided to get hearing aids.  He gets his health care from the VA, so he was on his way back from Nashville when he called to tell me how excited he was to be able to hear things he hadn’t heard clearly for years.  Mid-way through the conversation, he says he has to get off the phone because the stuff in the console of truck is rattling around, and it’s driving him crazy.  I smile and think to myself, “The Princess and the Pea, huh?” and an evil plan starts to hatch in my brain.  Normally, I take the advice of the Bible and “flee evil and the very appearance of evil,” but, alas, the temptation was too great and I forged ahead with the plan. 
I feel as if I’ve spent half my life telling Garey to turn down the TV.  I swear, there are times, that, from the driveway, I can hear an actress applying lipstick.  I saw an opportunity to put him in the shoes of (or maybe the ears of) the sensitive princess.  I switched on the TV, knowing Garey would want to watch the evening news as soon as he got home, and turned the volume up full-blast then I turned the TV off.  There is something wrong with the volume button on our remote, and it takes several pushes of the button to reduce the volume.  I was counting on this malfunction to pull off the plan. 
    When Garey arrived home, I was in the kitchen cooking dinner.  I told him to relax and watch the news while I finished up and I would bring him a plate when it was done.  Garey sat down in his recliner and switched on the TV.  The sound shook the coils in the toaster on my kitchen counter.  I watched from the doorway as he struggled with the volume button.
    “My God!” he yelled, “What’s wrong with this thing!”
    “What?” I asked innocently from the doorway.
    “I can’t get it turned down,” he said, “Isn’t this too loud for you?”
    “Sounds like it always does when you watch TV,” I said, “I guess I’ve gotten used to it.”
    I finished dinner and took us both a tray of food into the living room.
    “You’re not turning into the Princess and the Pea, are you?” I asked.
    Garey didn’t respond, and we both continued to watch the news at the near-deafening volume.
    “I think I’ve watched all the TV I want to watch,” he said, as the news ended, “I’ve had a really long day and I think I’ll just kick back and rest for a while.”
    As I cleared the dishes in the kitchen, I started to feel guilty for what I had done.  I was beginning to think I needed to tell him the truth when a familiar sound began to emanate from the living room.  Garey was snoring—at maximum volume.  No, I would wait a while longer.  There was room enough for two princesses in this house.
    (Writer’s Note: If you see Garey, you might not want to mention this little incident to him.  I can’t remember if I ever fessed up to it, and you know what they say about payback.)