Unwelcome Overtures

Starting on the day two weeks ago when JMU was closed due to inclement weather, I have sporadically been receiving...unwelcome overtures...from a strange source.

As I sat comfortably on my couch at about 10 o'clock that morning, watching the snow fall and the car-tires of my neighbors fail to grasp the slick slope of my parking lot, I received the first. I was reading a particularly strange and excellent story, "Game," by Donald Barthelme, in my silent apartment. Then, BAM!

With my mind near-perpetually halfway in another world, thanks to my LOST obsession and previously mentioned reading, the noise came as a particularly disturbing surprise. The sound was a sudden, loud, garbled explosion of a man/men's voices, quite like a completely incomprehensible conversation over out-of-range CB radios. The source was even more frightening.

After my initial start and reassurance that nothing had exploded and that my apartment was not being invaded by a ship of evil mercenaries, I followed the sound to its origin, my bathroom. I was awestruck.

The noise wasn't emanating from bursting water pipes or a malfunctioning vent fan, but rather, my up-until-that-very-moment-believed-to-be-busted shower clock-radio-mirror. It's the same shower clock-radio-mirror mom and dad had picked up for me ?two? Christmases ago. It had worked all through my senior year of college and this past summer,until a few weeks after I arrived here in Virginia.

Due (I can only hypothesize) to my hanging it on/under the shower head, the shower clock-radio-mirror absorbed an inordinate amount of water during my frequent showers, and eventually its electronic innards just flooded out. It'd been a solid three or four months since it had made a peep, so my surprise, I feel, was justified.

Being that the power button (an impotent little rubber nib) also had failed, my only recourse to silence it was to remove the batteries. I did so. Last week, during a Saturday morning shower, I thought I might give the ol' music box another chance, this time hanging safely on the outside of my shower curtain, and, to a lesser level of surprise, it did work...decently.

Since then, I have not tried to extract any type of noise from it again. But tonight, while reading through some LOST message boards, it happened again. This time it was, at least, tuned to a clear, classical-music station. It actually did create a nice, unexpected buildup as I neared the end of the theory post I was reading.

For the sound of music, the hills may not be alive, but my household electronics sure appear to be.