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| -by MOTHER |
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"Tick, tock, tickity tock, tockity, tickity, hickory, dickory..."
The noise was driving me crazy. It never stopped, day in and day out, 24/7 it echoed and re-echoed through my brain. My pulse thumped in time to it, my eyes blinked in time to it, my foot tapped in time to it. The incessant ticking of that big grandfather clock was taking over my life! |
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Why, oh why, had my parents chosen to make their home at the base of that
clock? There were plenty of other spots in the old house where they could
chew through the plaster and set up a hideyhole. Under the kitchen
cabinets, through the baseboard behind the sofa, at the back of the pantry.
But, nooooo, my mother wanted ambiance, style, a little glamour in her life.
Only mahagony was good enough for her. So all my days, from the moment I was
born, resonanted with the steady tick-tick-tocking.
Finally the day came when I couldn't stand it anymore! I had to stop it. Prowling around the bathroom on a foraging trip, I found a hair pin. That was the key. I could wedge it into the works of the clock and stop the machinery! Hair pin clasped in my teeth, I ran up the clock. Perched on an internal ledge I surveyed the mechanism. So many whirling gears, held together with shiny screws! The tall brass tubes that chimed the hours, the padded hammers posed above them. Huge chains holding up the weights that powered the pendulum. I was almost hypnotized by the back-and-forth of the pendulum. I reared up on my hind legs and tried to figure out the relationship between the gears. Where would be the best point for sabotage? It was a maze. |
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Then the chiming began.
No matter how loud it was down in the base, the Westminister chime sequence up close and personal was shattering. I could feel my ear drums popping, felt blood flooding my ear canal from the booming pressure. I thought I would go mad. Then the hammer rose above the largest chime, pulled back, and slammed into it to mark the hour. When the clock struck one, I lost all control, screaming. I ran back down, defeated. Today I sit here, a broken mouse, listening, always listening in horror to the "Tick, tock, tickity tock, tockity, tickity, hickory, dickory..." |
