Scared Me.

Imagine you are 1 year old, just about getting comfortable standing on your own two legs and discovering the joys and pains of being mobile. Now imagine yourself ambling unsteadily along when someone unexpectedly pops in behind you and goes 'BOO'. I don't know about you but I lost balance, landed with a 'thlop' (that's 'thump' and 'flop' thrown against each other) and started crying. Actually I am not sure if I starting crying before I 'thlop'ed or after. Anyway, I have felt scared multiple times through the years but carbon dating that memory has shown that the above mentioned was my earliest introduction to being scared. Unlike that first time, though, I don't really remember the details about all the other times.

Except for just one other time.

I must have been around 11 or 12 or 13 or somewhere in that vicinity. I was discovering songs and bathroom singing and music and rhythm and dance and left feet and other, similar, important, life altering stuff. I guess that's also the same vicinity where that funny thing called 'Voice Breaking' happens because my voice was breaking at that time though I immediately had no clue as to why I sounded like I had a throat infection. It took me a few days to wrap my head around the whole breaking thing but after that, I started waiting to see how I would sound after it broke completely.

It was during one of those waiting days. As was usual for me then, I went in to take a bath. After a few moments of alternating between being scalded and being frozen, I got the temperature of the water just right. With the shower thus set, I relaxed and started humming some song, enjoying the water on my head. A few minutes into this serenity, I began to hear a strange, spooky, grating noise mixed with the sound of water from the shower. It just seemed to grow more prominent the more I concentrated on it. That shower, I used it everyday, was not supposed to make any sound, leave alone anything that was particularly that eerie.

Now, having entered the realm of double digits as far as my age was concerned, I didn't repeat the 'lose balance, thlop down and cry' routine from my baby days. But I believe I was just as scared as I was then. Even as I went stock still, held my breath and continued listening, the strange noise disappeared. All I could now hear was the water hitting the ground. The absence of the noise was even more unnerving and I was half expecting something to materialize out of the shower spout. I got ready to get at least one full-blooded scream out before being gobbled by said 'something'. But nothing happened. Other than me wasting water by letting the shower run.

Slowly I started relaxing again and cautiously turned my attention back to enjoying my shower and my song. And the noise started again! That is when the proverbial bulb got switched on bright and remembering my scared self from a few moments back, I couldn't but laugh at myself. That strange, spooky, grating noise was in fact coming from the shower. But not from the spout like I had imagined, it was coming from under the shower. It was coming from me!

It was the sound of me singing in my not-yet-fully broken voice.