Hats off to you!

I've never been a 'material girl'. I don't have a particular attachment to too many 'things'. I could list on one hand some mementos of certain events or times in my life that would be on the list of those things-I-would-grab-if-I-had-to-leave-my-house-in-a-hurry. None of them are worth a lot of money, they simply are objects attached to very fond memories. There is, however, one item that doesn't fit on that list. It's one of those 'things' that I deem vital for my survival. It's not my potato peeler, which I must admit I love dearly. It's not even my crank by hand musher that produces great egg and tuna salad, as well as making avocado the perfect consistency for making guacamole. No, this the object that rises above them all. It is, of course, my yard duty hat.

When I bought my Elmer Fudd hat a number of years ago, everyone laughed at me. I was an oddity on the playground. Here I was with what is essentially a deer hunting hat (ironically, made of deer skin) while everyone else had their toques. My colleagues teased....until I invited them to try it on. Let's just say that the laughing stopped. My hat is warm and cozy and keeps the wind from attacking me.

But my hat does even more than that. My hat buffers the noise of all the little children playing on the yard. When I'm wearing my beloved hat, all of the yells and whoops and chants of the kids sound like one big mush, kind of like my avocado after it has been mushed by my other beloved inanimate object. It's fabulous! Or is it?

Today, the Jewish world celebrates the festival of Purim. One of our duties is to read the Megillah, the Scroll of Esther. Every time the villain Haman's name is mentioned, we are to make a lot of noise, so as to drown his name out. Over and over again through the reading, there is this blast of noise. Strangely, after a few times, the sound becomes tolerable. I start to get used to it. The kids who have waited an entire year for the chance to make a lot of noise become less and less excited, to the point of boredom. It all begins to sound like white noise.

I became accustomed to the white noise of chatting children when I taught kindergarten. There is a constant buzz in a kindergarten class, more so than in the grades. Over time I learned to tune out a lot of things. In many ways, tuning out was a blessing. Sometimes back then, knowing that I could tune out bothered me. It bothers me now, too.

We all 'tune out' many times during the day. We daydream. We focus on a TV show, or the newspaper, or the crossword or whatever we're tinkering with while someone else is talking and don't hear them. Sometimes for our own sanity we have to tune out, but we can only imagine what we're missing when we're not tuning in.

We all know the phrase, Don't go into the light! I think we have to start reminding ourselves not to go into the white noise. The trick is to pay attention, and swim through the white noise in order to listen to the voices that need to be heard. It isn't easy, but something tells me that it's worth the exercise.

Today I will drown out the sound of Haman. Tomorrow, I will try to break the white noise sound barrier!