Perish The Thought
I have to admit it: years ago I used to sit on the bus and think that people with massive ear-phones on their heads were showing off. Jokers! Monsters! Cretins! Evil Ones! Take them away and be gone! I thought. There seemed no need for it when you could get tiny little ear-phones which did a perfectly good job. No need at all! They looked like aliens to me, these people, and whenever I saw one I stared from afar, sure that their wearing of these hideous things was a symptom of a much greater problem. It’s true to say that some days I even got off the bus early, just so I could be nowhere near…
Fast forward seven years: I was at a friend’s house when I spied some of these big ear-phones. They were in the corner, and my friend saw me looking at them with fear in my eyes–”You want to try them on?” he said. I shivered. Then I shivered again as he reached out and grabbed them.
“Stop!” I said. “Take them away!”
He chucked them at me and there was nowhere to go: the next thing I knew I was holding the ear-phones, shaking all over, as though a Tarantula had been tossed into my lap.
“Try them on,” said my mate. “The sound is exceptional and that.”
Anxious to get him and his dastardly things away from me at speed, I did as he said (I was cornered and besides, if I hadn’t tried them on he would have forced me to wear them, which would have been even worse perish the thought–)
I put them on and sound boomed into my ears: but not the loud obnoxious kind, no! This was high-quality, pure sound like I had never heard!
That was the day I was cured. A day I will never forget–