Where I live, the maintinence guys give each apartment a routine bug spray on the first Monday of the month. You don’t need to be home. But I am retired now, and sometimes I forget they are coming. Oh boy, I hate getting caught in my bathrobe after 9 AM!
The last time I forgot the guys were coming, I wasn’t wearing a bathrobe. I was in the shower. (No, no. No one saw me naked.) But you know how you get great ideas while you’re taking a shower? I was thinking of a scene to put in a Chester Story, and was guffawing out loud. In the back of my mind, I wondered if my neighbors could hear me. They would think I was mad!
Finally, I stopped laughing and turned off the water. In the quiet, I heard a lilting voice from the kitchen call out: “Oh, JoAnn… pest control is here!”
Yeah, it was funny. But if the timing had been different, I could have been hauled away for observation.
You see, sometimes I verbally imitate my characters. In the Chester Stories, Chester’s human sings in the shower. She likes to parody spiritual hymns with the voice of a terrible opera singer. In addition, Chester responds with musical counterpoint.
It’s lucky the guys only caught me laughing. They might have heard me singing badly, barking, and howling.
Learn a simple lesson from my eperience. No matter how often you are ignored or talked-over, no matter the degree of privacy you think you have, when you least expect it… Somebody. Is. Listening!