Steve

Trigger exercise: write a story starting with the phrase "He never, never listened to me."

He never, never listened to me, even when I shouted “Timber!” as he chopped down the pear tree. I mean, he gave me the job, and he still didn’t listen. When we visited him in hospital afterwards he actually turned to my mum and said:

“I knew I should have asked you to do it, Sheila.”

Then they both looked at me reproachfully and I felt quite ashamed until I remembered that I did shout “Timber!” as the tree started to fall, and I shouted it at the top of my voice too, and he still just stood there and carried on chopping as the boughs hurtled down towards him.

That’s just how it was with Steve. Mr Thomas next-door always says his dog never listens to him, but what he really means that Shadow chooses not to listen when it’s time to go home from the park. But with Steve it was different. It was like one of those war films where a bomb goes off too close to a soldier and the soldier goes deaf, and you know he’s deaf because he looks around him and people are shouting at him, and he can see their mouths moving and their eyes creasing, and the little boomerangs of spittle flying towards him, but he hears nothing, as if someone’s just turned the volume right down. Well that’s how it is with me and Steve. I talk to him, and he must be able to see my lips move but he just doesn’t hear me.

A few weeks ago, Mr McKenzie did an experiment in physics where he put an oldfashioned alarm clock in a jar and then attached a vacuum pump and sucked all the air out of the jar. As the air got sucked out, the bell got quieter and quieter, until eventually all you could hear was the hum of the vacuum pump, although you could still see the hammer rattling away between the two bells.

“So,” said Mr McKenzie, “I can still see the ringing clock, but I can’t hear it. What does this
tell me about vacuums?”

“You can’t turn the lights out with the Hoover, sir?” said Becky White.

“In space, no-one can hear you scream, sir?” said Andy Parsons.

I walked home that afternoon wondering if that was the problem with Steve. When I got home, I asked my mum, “Mum, do you think it’s possible that Steve has vacuums in his ears?” But Mum just looked at me and sighed. “Ian, you’ve got to try to get on with him, son.” And that was that.

A couple of weeks later, Mr McKenzie told us all about frequencies, and how frequencies can be subsonic, audible or supersonic. He explained about how dogs car hear sounds that we can’t, because their ears can pick up supersonic frequencies. Maybe that’s the problem, I thought. Maybe the frequency I talk at is not within Steve’s audible frequency range. Admittedly it sounded a bit unlikely, but on the off-chance I stopped at the pet shop on the way home for a dog whistle. That evening we were sitting watching Eastenders, and I said:

“Steve?”

And Steve just sat there. So I said:

“STEVE?”

And still, no response. So I took out the whistle and gave it a good, hard blow. Still no response, although Shadow went nuts. Steve obviously heard the dog no problem at all, because he went out the back to throw a cup of water at him.

I just didn’t get it, so I went to see Mr McKenzie the next day at the end of school. I found him in his little office in the science block.

“Sir? Can I speak to you please?”

Mr McKenzie looked up over his glasses.

“Yes, of course. Come in, sit down.”

I think Mr McKenzie thought I was going to ask for help with the homework he’d set us; he looked a bit put out when I started talking about Steve. I told him how I’d been really hopeful when we started learning about sound because I thought it might explain why Steve never heard anything I said, but that nothing I’d learned so far has shed any light on the situation. Nevertheless, Mr McKenzie listened to me carefully, then he took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and said:

“Do you know, when man first tried to fly, he thought the secret lay in feathers. After all, birds had feathers, and birds could fly. Men would cover themselves in feathers, jump off the tops of trees, and then plummet to earth none the wiser. For centuries it perplexed them. Then we discovered the principles of aerodynamics - drag and lift. We realised that the secrets of flight lay in the shape of the wing, not what it was made of. Feathers, steel, balsa wood and tissue; it made no difference. You could study feathers ’til the cows came home, you’d never learn how to fly.”

He replaced his glasses, and looked at me straight through them.

“Do you see what I’m getting at, Ian?”

Well, I didn’t have a clue. What did wings have to do with Steve’s selective deafness?

“Not really sir. Sorry.”

Mr McKenzie sighed.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, lad. You won’t find the answer to your question in a physics text book. You’d be better off speaking to Miss Wilson.”

“Miss Wilson? The psychology teacher?”

“Is there another Miss Wilson?”

I just stared at Mr McKenzie; I still didn’t get it. Eventually he stood up.

“Do I have to spell it out to you, Ian? Your step-dad can hear you just fine. When you talk, the sound waves travel through the air and vibrate his ear drums just the same as any other sound. It’s not that he can’t hear you - it’s that he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t want to hear you. There will be a reason for that, but I’m not the one to find it.”