Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Like a trumpeter at a harp concert (Dec. 19, 2007)

She got on the bus one stop after I did downtown, along with five other friends. She was 13, give or take a year, a little heavy but not overly so. Nothing remarkable about her face or body. She sat in the back, and the six of them formed a little horseshoe so they could chat. Nothing wrong so far.

Then I heard her voice. Piercing. Searing. Not exactly fingernails on a chalkboard, more like tearing something with a shard of glass. Yeah, a little louder than her friends, but not that much louder. She wasn't singing, just talking, yet I feared for the integrity of the bus's window glass.

How do some people get voices like that?

How to describe it? Like a trumpeter at a harp concert. Maybe a better analogy is someone playing an oboe reed at a harp concert, minus the oboe.

As I've said many times, I've ridden well over 15,000 trips on public transit. Rarely have I had to cover my ears when someone 15 feet away spoke. Gawd, was I happy when she exited that bus.

It was that bad. Yeeeesh.

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