Mr. Tommy Gets His Ears Pierced

The memory of a radio broadcast from 60 years ago still crops up in my brain from time to time.

The broadcast play was a drama about a man who has just been told that his incapacitating illness will soon result in his death.

He is bedridden. Soon, his ability to speak is impaired. He is confined to a bedroom upstairs in his home. He is paralyzed and mute.

By and by, he begins to notice something very strange.

His hearing becomes more and more acute. He can hear sounds, music, voices from further and further away.He can hear a railroad train whistle even though he is several miles away from the tracks.

Soon he hears, or overhears, hurtful conversations. The lawyer comes by to discuss with the pending widow the imminent demise of her husband. The details are cold and crass. There’s a scene with the banker. The doctor. The mortician. Upstairs, unable to move or speak, the poor man hears it all.

The sick man’s parents come to visit. In a discussion downstairs, his dad says something conciliatory to the pending widow like, “I don’t know why he grew up to be so mean. He was always a very mannerly little boy.”

Later, he can hear his wife speaking with his best friend. They are hatching a plan to marry, once the sick man dies. On and on.

Through my adult life, I have occasionally reflected on that little drama and I have pondered what it would be like to have super-human hearing. It would certainly be a curse. It would hardly have any positive value.

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The answer to this particular lifelong question came, at least in part, last Sunday.

We attended the 11:30 a.m. Mass. Laura was the cantor and I was simply a member of the assembly, having for that day no extraordinary duties.

Every Mass has its values and its benefits, but you have to admit some go together better than others.

This time, the lectors performed flawlessly, deacon reading the Gospel had a good grip on the holy words. The homilist was quite helpful to us, adding a contemporary view of the meanings of the scripture readings for that day.

Like she always does, Laura presented her melodious voice, giving glory and praise to the Lord. I was lulled into a kind of drowse or maybe even a trance. I do that sometimes, when I am consciously well prepared for Mass, communion and prayer.

When it was my turn, I got in line and went to communion. I received the body and then the blood of our dear Lord Jesus Christ.

I returned to my pew and knelt. I went immediately into deep prayer, so deep that I was almost paralyzed, at least immobilized.

I was physically and emotionally unable even to pick up the hymnal, to turn to the page containing the communion song. I was unable even to sing. Something had taken me away, and it wasn’t Calgon.

Dreamily, after a time, I looked up and saw that the communion line was at its end. Soon, the priest came down from the sanctuary. As is his custom, he turned back toward the crucifix and the altar, and knelt in prayer. In post-communion meditation.

It was time for the meditation song. Laura had planned “Jesus Loves Me,” which has re-entered my life as a favorite song. It is a very good song for meditation, especially verse four.

Then it happened. A horrid, ungodly, jarring screech began issuing forth from the choir loft. It wasn’t Laura and it wasn’t Jesus Loves Me. And it wasn’t meditative in any sense of the word. It was a guest vocalist whose name is unknown to me.

Later I learned that the vocalist’s presence was to promote her concert that afternoon, a concert to benefit a Greeley Catholic grade school. We support the school. We wish our children would have had the benefit it offers.

When she began her performance, however, my hands flew involuntarily to cover my ears. I frantically looked around, to see if anyone else was suffering from a similar reaction. Didn’t find a companion in my misery, not one.

Immediately, I began plotting an escape. Nope, the fire exit wouldn’t work because I’d have to walk to the left of the kneeling priest, and my movement might distract him from his meditation.

At least he was giving the appearance of meditating. I will probably never know if he was really able to meditate. My dreamy meditation time was long gone, lost to a most exquisite example of caterwauling.

The screeching continued, minute after painful minute. It was so high-pitched and voluminous that even with my little fingers jammed into my ear canals about three inches, I couldn’t shut it out. I envied deaf people because they could turn their hearing aids off.

I looked back. The side door was too far away for any kind of subtle escape. I lurch when I walk and draw attention, causing distraction. Not wanting to interfere, I realized I had to sit it out.

I remembered the poor man in the radio show. Couldn’t shut off his extraordinary hearing. I wondered. Will calluses form where my eardrums once lived? Will I have new piercings to brag about to New Age people?

Will my brains come foaming out my ears at any moment? Will I really die from a terminal dose of caterwauling?

I was in very real pain. I lay down in the pew, hoping the screeching wouldn’t penetrate the hardwood to find me there. No good. Fingers in ears, eyes tightly shut, mouth firmly closed, I was doomed. I was ready to die.

Finally, short of death, came reprieve. The obnoxious high-decibel cacophony ceased. Mercy. God had granted me the mercy for which I had been fervently praying.

A woman sitting in the pew ahead of me turned and asked, “Wasn’t that beautiful?” I didn’t want to lie and I didn’t want to tell the truth. I could only manage a blank look.
Later, my ears hurt. In fact, my ears have hurt for several days, and I have had a slight sore throat. My teeth and gums were sore from clenching my jaw.

Apparently, I am the only person who suffered so. Laura’s word for the performance was . . . “beautiful.” The presentation Sunday did not persuade me to attend the benefit concert.

In vain, I have cautiously inquired of other persons who were present. To a man and woman, no one has reported any kind of similar experience. “Beautiful” is the word most people use to describe their personal experience through an event that I found offensive, jarring, even painful.

What happened, then? Why was an event so horrific and unpleasant to me perceived so differently by others? I am anxiously awaiting the answer to that and some other questions.

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Word of the Week: Caterwaul. “Cater” is a noun from Latin, meaning a person who provides or acquires a product, as in caterer. A cater is also a male cat. Middle English has caterwrawen, an echo.

To us today, caterwauling is the making of a shrill, howling sound like that of a cat at rutting time. It’s a screech, wail or scream. Caterwauling.