Believe Everything You Hear

 

I heard someone behind me in line at the grocery store– granted, we were both triple-masked, wearing translucent hermetic ponchos sixteen feet away and facing in opposite directions – but it sure sounded an awful lot like she was calling for the de-annexation of Alaska and Hawaii, robbing the two of well-deserved statehood. It didn’t seem like she had anything against luaus, igloos or volcanos, but just that she yearned for a day when the stars of the American flag returned to their rightful position depicting a perfect 6 X 8 rectangle. Back when the lower 48 was all that mattered. She said that the two far-flung states can stay in the Union - how nice of her. Still, how is it fair to Puerto Rico or Guam to leave things as they are? She left open the possibility of one day buying Canada and turning it into Up-Upstate New York. But then again, I was rifling through a noisy bag of popcorn, so it was a little hard to make out more than every third word. 

I heard some wind blowing between buildings, and I know it sounds crazy, but I’m fairly confident that through the gusts, I heard the phrase, “When are you going to re-watch Friends?” I know, it’s odd. How you can re-watch something you’ve never watched. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the wind was anticipating a dark turn in my television consumption. The remark was followed by lots of whistling, which was, as is often the case with whistling, incredibly annoying. 

I heard the blood-curdling shrieks of local bees and other low-level street-dwellers as I made my morning jog through relatively empty streets. In other words, there were no witnesses to corroborate. It was a standard "he said/be said" situation. Running is hard enough when you have to avoid every crack, twig and piece of lone garbage that may attract some buzzing interloper. But these cries were too much, even for me. What they were saying wasn’t easily understood, but if you’ve ever been cursed out in a foreign language you know that a translation isn’t always needed to be completely understood. 

I heard that listening is the new reading. Although, that could be a typo. To be fair, this only what I’m hearing. And I haven’t even addressed what I’ve been seeing recently. But I don't wear glasses.