Stop now, what’s that sound?

Dripping in sweat, I slowly climbed the six steps from our garage to the kitchen. I had just finished cleaning up the many sticks and pine cones in our yard stemming from Tropical Storm Debby, a full four-trash-bag job.

 

“Let me get you a cold water,” my lovely wife, Grace, stated, retrieving a plastic bottle from the refrigerator.

 

After I twisted off the bottle cap my Aunt Toogie, seated at the kitchen counter, announced, “Ten.”

 

“I counted only nine,” Grace replied.

 

“What are you two talking about?” I inquired.

 

“We were just talking about how many times a day you grunt or groan,” Toogie explained.

 

“Moi?” I replied with a modicum of staged surprise.

 

Undaunted, Toogie continued. “So we decided to count how many sounds you made when you came in. I heard 10. One when you closed the door to the garage. Two more when you took off your shoes, one for each shoe. Six more coming up the steps, one for each step, and the final one taking off the

bottle cap.”

 

“I missed the door closing,” Grace chimed in. “I guess that makes it 10.”

 

Feeling a need for some rebuttal, I uttered, “Give me a break, gals. I’ve been outside in the unrelenting humidity and heat. Plus I don’t grunt all that much.” 

 

“I’m afraid you do, dear,” Grace offered.  When I didn’t respond, she added, “When you get into bed and out of bed. When you sit down and when you stand up. When you put clothes on and off.”

 

“I must say,” Toogie chortled, “You certainly put the groan in the term grown -up!”

 

This set off a cacophony of banter from both ladies.

 

“Pretty soon,” Toogie chortled, “I bet he does it each time he changes a channel on TV.”

 

“Or turns the page of a book,” Grace giggled.

 

“How about each mouse click on his laptop?” Toogie guffawed.

 

The ladies then pivoted to a grammatical debate over whether my utterances were actually a sign, moan, groan, or grunt. For you readers playing along at home, they defined a sign as a slow, audible exhalation. Moans are longer, and sometime softer and higher pitched sounds. Groans, on the other

hand, are deeper, and more abrupt, resonations. And, grunts, well they are the granddaddy of these articulations – short, explosive, loud, guttural reverberations. Think pig when he discovers he’s about to become bacon. After a long discussion that would have pleased Merriam-Webster, they decided I was

guilty of all four sound sins but that grunt won the gold medal, with groan claiming the silver.

 

Sensing they may have gone a tad too far, Grace patted my arm and said, “I’m trying to help. You do it a lot, honey. It makes you look and sound old.”

 

“He is old,” Toogie declared.

 

“No, I mean how we handle the inevitable passage of time,” Grace continued. “You’ll both feel and appear younger if you do it less.”

 

Absorbing the situation, I finally muttered, “I guess I could try to do it less often.”

 

“That’s nice,” Grace soothed, giving me a peck on the cheek.

 

After a pause, Toogie piped up, “Hey, I’ve got an idea.” Before Grace or I could respond, Toogie continued, “Your Uncle Harold wanted to stop saying cuss words. He was a lector at church and didn’t think it was proper. But he was working our farm and the farm hands swore like sailors. It was easy to

follow suit. So, he set up a swear jar. Every time he said a bad word, he put a quarter in the jar. That doesn’t sound like much money now, but it was significant back then. In one year, we had enough in the jar to rent a cabin at the lake for a week. And, most of all, it finally cured Harold from swearing. He dreaded that quarter fine – personally and monetarily.”

 

“What a great idea!” Grace mused. “I’ve got the perfect jar, a large, crystal ice bucket, with Dalton’s initials on it.” Turning to me she asked, “Want to try it? You like games.”

 

“I’m not following you,” I answered.

 

“We have a jar; call it the Grunt Jar,” Grace explained. “Every time you sigh, moan, groan or grunt, you put some money…”

 

“Make it a dollar,” Toogie interjected.

 

“And,” Grace continued, “I bet the incentive to not have to pay will cause you to do it less.”

 

“Who gets the money in the jar?” I asked.

 

“We do!” Toogie declared, waving her finger back and forth between Grace and herself. “We have to put up with all your noises.  Your loss of the dough is part of the cure!”

 

“What do I win if I don’t grunt or whatever?”

 

“Tell you what,” Toogie shot back. “If you go an entire week without a fine, I’ll take you to Oak Steakhouse. My treat.”

 

“Deal!” I hollered, slapping my hand on the kitchen counter so hard I had to purse my lips to suppress a groan.

 

Grace headed toward the butler’s pantry looking for the ice bucket.

 

We are now three days removed from the above conversation. I feel poorly, both personally and monetarily. I’m down a $116. Toogie has gone to the bank to get paper wrappers to bundle up 50 one dollar bills. By her count, if things continue at this rate, she and Grace will be up over ten grand in less than a year. Dinnertime talk has turned to how they will spend their loot. There is a lot of talk about some guy named Christian Louboutin, whoever he is. Or a weekend a Canyon Ranch. Right now, I just know I’m nowhere near a filet at Oak Steakhouse.  It’s enough to make you want to shout or cry, but I’m afraid the ladies would declare that a one dollar infraction, too. As Buffalo Springfield sang, 

 

You better stop

 

Now, what’s that sound?

 

Everybody look, what’s going down?