That afternoon, the home seemed strangely silent. The mother went about her usual business, collecting laundry and cleaning up as she went. Sunlight came through the hallway windows. A tiny humming sound shattered the silence just as she walked by her thirty-five-year-old daughter’s chamber. It was steady, repetitive, and oddly machine-like. She frowned and stopped. She wondered if maybe the ceiling fan was acting up again or if her daughter had finally chosen to clean.
She couldn’t help but be curious. She knocked once, but no one answered, so she cautiously pulled the door open. She stopped in her tracks when she saw what was in front of her. Her daughter jumped a little, and her cheeks turned red, showing that she was in a private moment. The mother, shocked and perplexed, said, “What the heck are you doing?”
The daughter sighed and said, “Mom, I’m thirty-five, still living at home, and this is the closest I’ll ever get to a husband.” She didn’t feel bad about it.
The quiet hum was the only sound in the room. The mother opened her mouth and then closed it again. She finally said something about “needing some air” and left the room, trying to act like nothing had happened. She spent the remainder of the day wandering around the home in a trance, not knowing whether to laugh or call a family meeting.
A few days later, the mother was out running errands, and the father was in the kitchen making coffee when he heard the same low humming sound again. It sounded like it was coming from underneath. He put down his mug and followed the ruckus down to the basement. He stopped when he got to the corner. There was his daughter again, completely peaceful and apparently not worried that Dad had shown up out of nowhere. “What are you doing?” he said, his voice halfway between anger and amazement.
Without missing a beat, his daughter said the same thing to him that she had said to her mother: “Dad, I’m thirty-five, still living at home, and this is the closest I’ll ever get to a husband.”
The dad remained there for a time, completely defeated by how she had answered. He wiped his forehead, said something about the high expense of living, and then trudged back upstairs, realizing that certain things were better left alone.
A few days later, the house was silent again until the familiar hum came back, this time from the den. The mother, who was now both angry and suspicious, followed the noise. She froze in her tracks when she opened the door. Her husband was seated on the couch, watching a football game on TV. And there, on the couch next to him, was the buzzing contraption, blissfully humming away.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She asked, “What are you doing now?”
He said, “Watching the game with my son-in-law,” without taking his eyes from the TV.
The mother’s jaw dropped. For a few seconds, she stood there, caught between yelling and laughing. After that, she just turned out the lamp and went away, shaking her head as the continuous hum followed her down the corridor.
The father was able to enjoy his game in peace for the rest of the night. The mild vibration filled the room like the strangest commentary soundtrack in the world. In a house where everyone had their own weird ways of dealing with life’s tiny disappointments, it was somehow the perfect, silly finish to an already amazing week.
