I don’t remember exactly when Amy started making The Noise.
I just remember hearing it and thinking it was cute because.. well, it was. I’d try to write it out phonetically for you here, but noises are sort of difficult to translate into text. Especially cute ones. You can do screaming (“AAIIEEE!!”), yelling (“HEY YOU!”) and eruptions (“BURP!”). But sweet, gentle sounds are tough to do in print. Let’s just say it’s sort of like the cute little noise you would get if you pushed a cute little button on a cute little machine – a two-tone effect not unlike the sound my old bicycle squeeze horn used to make, only with a high-pitched squeak on the end.
Cute.
Very cute.
At least, it was cute the first 700 times I heard it. Then it started getting old, and we asked Amy to find another noise to make — like the sound of silence, for example. That was the last I’d heard of it – except for an occasional accidental flare-up of inadvertent cuteness – until the day Amy decided to go public with The Noise.
Why she decided to call the radio station’s “Stupid Human Tricks” contest, I'll never know. But she did — and she won! The disc jockeys couldn’t believe she was actually making The Noise herself — they had her do it over and over again just to be sure. But they liked it – like I said, it’s cute – and they declared her the winner of a $100 gift certificate, not to mention her 15 minutes of local radio fame.
Amy was thrilled. But it wasn’t because of the gift certificate or the glory. It was because her special talent was finally appreciated.
“They loved it!” she squealed when she called me on the phone to tell me about it. “They kept laughing and asking me to do it again! It was so fun!”
Now, it should be pointed out that Amy has many talents, for which she often receives significant acclaim. She has a beautiful singing voice, and is a gifted speaker and writer. But The Noise is unique to her, and therefore important to her. So after many years of being patted on the head and then asked to please stop it, for a few minutes she actually had an audience that appreciated this special talent. And she basked in it. She reveled in it. She savored every moment of it. Even though the moment was fleeting and the gift certificate was quickly expended, she felt somehow validated.
I think it’s that way for many of us. We have special little talents – not the Olympic medal-winning stuff, but the little things that are important to us because we think we do them well – that often go unappreciated by the people closest to us. We perform these tasks without recognition or acclaim dozens, hundreds, even thousands of times. Then somebody notices our talent and expresses sincere appreciation for it, and suddenly we're Sally Field at the Oscars.
"You like me! You really like me!"
Well, OK – maybe that's stretching the point a bit. Still, it wouldn't hurt any of us to look for unrecognized talents in those who are nearest and dearest to us, and to find a way to recognize them. Celebrate good bed-making. Applaud excellence in parallel parking. Acknowledge a well-tied tie. Give a cheer for neat hand-writing.
And pump up da noise for.. you know.. The Noise.
To read more by Joseph B. Walker, go to http://www.josephbwalker.com/.