Les Sons du Silence

I lost my voice. It happened last week. One morning I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Nobody seemed to think this was a problem.

When you lose your voice, your life passes before your eyes. All the words you ever uttered, all the hours and months and years of useless information that has spewed forth into the universe from your throat, come back to haunt you. Suddenly that void inside your head is...unavoidable. Filled now with the word ghosts of your long wordy life, your skull is a vacuum. Silent as a coffin.

It got me thinking.

Maybe I should just shut up. Shut the fuck up! For good. For the good of all. For instance, this blahg. Nobody reads it. Well, seven people do. And they're all nobodies. I can't remember why I started this literary (ad)venture in the first place. Oh yeah. To add something, er, on the positive side to my long list of addictions. Well. I've proven I can be as addicted to spewing forth in cyberspace as I am to guzzling cheap Italian wine or running until my skeletal structure disintegrates.

Mission accomplished. Now what?

Speaking of running, it's not that I'm running out of things to say. Trust me, that will never be an issue. For instance, here's a sampling from my "Future Stuff to Spew Forth About" list, off the scores of Post-Its which adorn the walls and surfaces of my cozy belfry cubby:

1. My daughter is addicted to her cellphone.
2. My daughter is addicted to "American Idol."
3. My daughter wants to audition for "American Idol."
4. "American Idol" sucks.
5. Carly Simon (& Schuster) sucks.
6. I've had it with nepotism.
7. I've had it with creativity.
8. I've had it with procreators.
9. What's the deal with The Rapture?

Previews of coming attractions. If, in fact, there will be any attractions coming. My husband says I should ask the seven nobodies to declare themselves. Not their actual identities, Sacre Dieu!, but the fact of their existence. Ma raison d'etre, s'il vous plait. If no declarations are forthcoming, I should cork it. Zip it. Give it a rest. I should go on vacation, he says.

"You should go on vacation," says my husband.

Actually, I am going on vacation. To the South of France. The South of Fucking France! Can you fucking believe it? My husband is taking me to the Fucking South of Fucking France! I hear that the French like older women. That they drink alot of wine. That it's hot there in summer, the way god intended it to be, as opposed to 37-and-cloudy-with-a-wind-off-the-lake. I think the S of F is going to suit me to a T. I might even run into BB, one of my heroes. If you can't imagine why BB is one of my heroes, Google it and learn something.

So, no. It's not that I'm running out of things to say, merci beaucoup. It's that I'm sick of the sound of my own voice. The old "Be careful what you ask for..." routine.

When I lost my voice, I was struck dumb. Literally. I've never felt so dumb. Not since High School. But this was different. This time, unlike High School, I knew I was dumb. I was painfully aware of just how dumb I was. Am. Not only did I lose the words in my mouth, I lost the words in my head. The idea of words. The raison for words. All lines went dead. The computer that is me crashed, baby.

That's all she wrote. Spoke. Thought.

The preschoolers I work with can't write, can't read, can barely listen. So what is it I "teach" them exactement? Good question. But, I digress.

To get the preschoolers' attention during my laryngitic event, I shook a tambourine, then followed that up with hand gestures and facial expressions. Like I said, the S of F is going to suit me to a T. To get my attention, the preschoolers whispered. They sidled up and pulled on the hem of my shirt and started whispering. So-and-so farted! So-and-so said "chicken butt!" So-and-so didn't flush number two! I considered having the maintenance guy sit in for me at Circle Time, but instead substituted three days of frozen tag with the little shit-whisperers out on the playground. Whenever I got tagged and had to freeze, I felt at one with the universe, in harmony with all things.

Frozen. Silenced. Novocained. KO'ed.

My family considered my silence a sudden windfall. Like a bank mistake, or a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. Beds remained unmade, dishes unbussed, homework undone. The old "If you can't hear it, it ain't broken" routine. It's humbling to realize I am not so much a wife/mother/friend/confidante, as a disembodied voice barking commands. Make that a no-body. At one point I called my daughter on her cellphone to find out where she was, i.e., somewhere in our house or in someone else's (I hadn't seen her for two days). The folly of this didn't register until she answered, and I, of course, couldn't. Tant mieux!

Most people thought I was deaf as well as dumb. They either spoke loudly and carefully, exaggerating vowel sounds, or, like the preschoolers, whispered. When I finally began regaining the power of speech, I sounded like a bullfrog in early spring, croaking spasmodically from a winter's worth of unused vocal apparatus. Store clerks gaped in disgust and looked away. Mothers pulled their children closer. Dogs tried to hump me.

I'm still recovering. I sound like I've been awake for a week, drinking whiskey and smoking stogies. I sound like Hillary Clinton. Speaking of running (off at the mouth! for dear life! out of ideas!), how do you know when to stop? When enough is enough? Does it take an act of god, like laryngitis, to finally hear that still small voice in your ear? You have to silence yourself. Lose the words. Bite your tongue. There!

"Ferme la bush!"

(Did you hear it? There it goes again!)

"FERME LA BUSH!!!"