What Are You Listening For?

You have heard, I think, the story of the cricket on Bloor Street. Now, Bloor Street is a busy street and at rush hour it can become quite noisy: honking cars, idling cars with poor mufflers, people calling, busses rushing, and those signals for the blind on the lights – “cuckoo, cuckoo; pink–a, pink–a.” How she heard it, I don’t know, but with wide eyes she said to her friend, “I hear a cricket.”

Her friend lifted her eyebrow.

“No, really.” She took her friend by the arm and led her across the street and then slowly along the other side. Stopping at a flower barrel, she peered inside. After pushing a few dead leaves aside, she exclaimed, “Ah-ha! Here it is!”

The friend was amazed. “Whoa,” she said, “You must have bionic hearing!”

“No,” she said. She took a handful of change form her coat pocket, she tossed it on the ground. Everyone within thirty feet stopped and looked down.

“It’s just a matter of what you are listening for.”