So, every night for the past three weeks or so I’ve climbed into bed to the serenade of a high-pitched squeal.

“I can’t hear it” Bert said,

“Oh,” I bragged, “I guess I just have better hearing than you.”

“Yeah.” Bert conceded not at all impressed by my super-ears, “it’s probably the hot tub”

Unfortunately we couldn’t turn the hot tub off at night for fear of freezing pipes. Until, that is, we finally shut the hot tub down for the season. I climbed into bed that night ready to drift off in blissfull silence.

“Uh Bert. I still hear the squeal. Is the heating turned on?”

“No”

“What about the computer?”

“No”

“The printer?”

“No”

“The humidifier”

“We don’t have a humidifier”

On and on but there was nothing that could possibly be squealing. And Bert still couldn’t hear a thing.

Then it dawned on me, ever since I got back from my last business trip the heating in my office has been making a high pitched squeal. I keep calling the people to fix it and they kept making it go away…OR SO I THOUGHT.

It turns out that they’ve just been turning the volume of the squeal down and, after a full day at the office listening to the squeal, my brain’s been creating some sort of memory of what I’m hearing in the office.

It’s totally true - when I plug my ears the squeal gets louder.