When I was a child living in Wilmington, I can remember the first time that I became fascinated with a word.
The word was "Port." I had heard it on the TV, and the way the person said it sort of tickled my eardrums. I went running to mom in my excitement, who was in the kitchen of our apartment. I can't remember what I said to her, but it probably wasn't very coherent. I was trying to explain to her that I knew a word, but I don't think she understood.
In my head, the mental image that came to mind with the word "port" as the person on TV had said it was actually a microphone, the larger type of metal microphone, used at radio stations and which had holes in it. The tickling sensation that the sound of the word made in my ears was sort of synonymous with being able to touch the metal microphone and feel all the holes on it. I'm not sure why I made the association between "port" and a microphone. Perhaps the person on TV had said something like, "Plug the microphone into the port." But I really don't know.
This all might seem a little "out there." My memories from Wilmington are my first memories, though, when I was able to make even less sense of the world than I can now as an adult.
The more that I write about these early memories, the more that come back to me, which is what I wanted to happen when I started this blog.
The same tickling sensation in my ear drums returned when we lived in Wake Forest. Mom was a school teacher by trade, and she taught me at home for the first year or so. I never went to pre-school or kindergarten, but started my formal education in the first grade.
This was at Millbrook, a kindergarten through 12th grade school. Mom worked as a teacher's aide at the school, and it was a tough start to each day when she took me to my classroom and then had to leave me there. I remember one anxiety filled morning in particular when I was there in the classroom, waiting. Mom had to leave me there before anyone else had arrived. I sat there all alone on a bean bag with the lights turned off.
Anyway, mom always made me lunch, which I kept in my metal lunch box. She often included seedless grapes for me to snack on later in the afternoon.
One of my friends at Millbrook was an African-American boy. I can't remember his name, now, but I do recall that he spoke with a bit of a lisp.
At the end of each day, we would all be sitting at our desks, waiting for the intercom to call students to their buses. He rode the bus, but I waited for mom to come and get me.
The boy, who sat at his desk across from me while we waited, saw me eating my grapes. He said that we could play a game with them.
I was interested, so we began the game. It consisted of the boy mimicking the rhyme of "eeny, meeny, miny, moe," except he used words and phrases that I had never heard before. I can't remember them all, but one phrase he used a lot was "acka-dacka-ooh."
He would tap my desk and then his own, back and forth as he chanted the phrases. Whenever he stopped the phrase, that's how we would know who got a grape.
Of course, he ended up getting most of the grapes, but I did not mind. Listening to him speak those strange words with his lisp while he tapped our wooden desks with his fingers tickled my ear drums. It was comforting to me to listen to him, and I was disappointed when the intercom called his bus number and he ran out of the class.
There have been other times when I hear something that tickles my ear drums, but it is very rare.
I can give you a first hand example of one, though. I enjoyed watching the late painter, Bob Ross, on the Public Broadcasting System.
Here is a link to one of the episodes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPPOpWBMFx4
When he talks, that is often enough. But especially when Ross talks and at the same time knocks the knife against the palette, those are pleasing sounds.
Perhaps I am the only person who gets this. What tickles my ear drums may seem weird to everyone else, but this blog is about my experiences. I hope that reading about it is enjoyable for at least some people.
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