EMPTY NEST By Curt Swarm

The Mystery of the Ghost and Hearing Aid

Posted

I heard a voice.  It was a young female voice coming from, it sounded like, the inside of the wall, or maybe the attic, or guest bedroom.  Or maybe even from town.  We live a couple of miles from Mt. Pleasant, and sometimes we hear loud-speaker voices coming from that direction, especially at Old Threshers time.

But I didn’t have my hearing aids in, after all I had just gotten out of bed at 2:00 am, and when I don’t have my hearing aids in, I can be confused as to what direction sounds are coming from (something to look forward to as you age, guys).  

Also, when I get up, the first thing I do, like most people, is use the bathroom.  So, there I was standing each morning, when I get up, using the bathroom, hearing this young female voice, “Hi, what are you doing?  Can you come play?” or some such nonsense.  The voice was hard to decipher because, as I said, I didn’t have my hearing aids in.  I thought it might be Stormy, our cat, or my cat.  Cats can yowl like children you know.  Stormy had been rubbing up against my legs wanting attention.  When I wouldn’t give him any, he disappeared.

I told Ginnie about “the voice” I was hearing in the mornings, only when I was using the bathroom.  I didn’t hear it any other time.  It sort of spooked her.  “Do we have a ghost?” she asked.

“Dunno,” I said.  “All I know is I hear this young girl’s voice in the morning when I get up and use the bathroom.  It might be Stormy.”

It was about this time that I lost one of my hearing aids, my right one.  I had been watching television and napping in the recliner (Monday Night Football).  When Ginnie got me up to go to bed, I noticed the hearing aid missing.  I looked all over.  Ginnie and I both looked—under the recliner, in the blankets, in the waste basket beside the recliner.  Nada.

Great.  That’s all I needed is the expense of replacing a hearing aid.  But then I found out I can hear pretty well with just one hearing aid in my left ear, which has the most hearing loss.  So, I was sporting around with just one hearing aid, and getting along marginally well.  Except when I was driving and Ginnie was beside me in the passenger seat, my right side.  I found out I couldn’t hear her all that well, which was sort of a benefit.  “Would you please just get new hearing aids?” she said rather pointedly. 

“Harrumph.”

Then Ginnie was poking around in a closet that is on the other side of the bathroom wall.  She moved some stuff and heard a young woman’s voice.  “Can you come out to play?”  Startled, she moved some boxes and there was a child’s doll house that we keep for the grandkids.  We had left the switch on, and every time the doll house was jostled, it would set off the voice.

“I found your ghost,” she told me gleefully, and showed me the doll house.  Evidently Stormy was going in the closet in the morning when I wouldn’t pay attention to him and setting off the dollhouse voice.

“Well, I’ll be,” I said.

It was shortly thereafter that I walked into the kitchen and spied my missing hearing aid, lying on Stormy’s rug.  As near as I can figure, Stormy had found my hearing aid and hid it in his secret hiding place.  Knowing I needed my hearing aid (he is my cat, you know), he decided to return it.

We pay more attention to Stormy now.  He’s my muse cat and I need inspiration.    

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