After reading emergency’s post “Feeling stupid” in this forum, I just had to share this.
I am remodeling a kitchen for a client. The other day I hear a very high pitch squealing tone. I am crawling along the floor listen to the base cabinets to locate it. The house keeper also hears it and directs me that it is coming from the other side of the room. It sounds like it is in the wall or the floor. I can not locate it.
Later in the day I hear it again. Now I am outside. I cannot determine if it is coming from my clients house or the neighbor as it has a real nondirection quality.
By evening the sound is back. A friend stops by and is adamant that the sound is coming from the attic. I reply that there is nothing in the attic that can make such a sound. It seemed that anywhere I went in the house I could hear this sound.
We called the alarm company to see if it was causing a problem. We disconnected the alarm. We called the electrician to see if he had ever experienced it before. I shut off the water lines . I shut off the gas lines. I tripped the electrical breakers. I was determined to find this problem damn it! no sound will get the best of me.
I went on the roof in the darkness of night wearing a light strapped to my forehead. I could faintly hear the sound, but when I put my ear to the attic vents it seemed louder. Ah ha! It is in the attic, I concluded. So, I went up into the attic. ( a very tight, hot filthy place) I crawled around from end to end listen for where the sound might be the loudest. I could not tell. I could hear it but I could not locate it. This ordeal began at 10 a.m. now it is about 8:30 p.m.
My client said" Let’s go to dinner and deal with this later". I conceded and so we loaded up in his car. As we began to drive off I could still hear the sound in my head. I figured it was due to hearing it all day. His wife made the same comment. Well she had heard it all day also, so it made sense. But then he had said that he heard it and believed it was now in the car. He thought it was my cell phone. I checked and it wasn’t. Then I thought, Well, what else do I have on me? In my other pocket was a small digital recorder. I removed it from my pocket and there it was squealing away. The record button was on and the earbuds were creating feedback into the microphone. We all got a huge laugh at my expense.
That is funny! It reminds me of my recently departed grandfather who used to go on hunts around my parents’ house looking for “that damned radio someone keeps leaving on…” Of course, it was his own hearing aid feeding back. To him, it was so faint he could never quite place where it was coming from. My high-end hearing is shot from years of backstage acoustic abuse, but I could still hear gramp’s hearing aid all the way across the house. 