Due to collective family superstition I can't talk about the game so here. Have this instead.

He said, "Come here kid and I'm gonna teach you with all my fancy fire.
Come here kid and I'm gonna seat you on top of this hill.
I can 'cause you are blind and boy you are desperate.
You're troubled at home and I know what's wrong.
I see you fading so I'll help you up tonight.
Come up here in the air tonight."

There's a beautiful huge wall of rhododendron on my street and the boys are fascinated by it presently. Apparently it's a living hornets nest through and through. Ben said the sound was positively unreal, almost like an engine or an aircraft when you are standing right beside it. The boys are stunned that no one has been chased down the street by a swarm of hornets already.

They told me to check it out. Not because I would get stung (odds are I won't because I grew up in a beekeeping environment and have exactly one sting to my credit in life) but because this was an interesting thing to check out. The dog walk gets boring sometimes, especially when we can't go into the wood (forbidden due to current black bear density and the whole love affair with The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon)

I stood beside the wall of fading flowers. Nothing. I could see the hornets. I could see dozens of the little fuckers. I just couldn't hear them. At all. I went home and put in my hearing aids and I went back. Still NOTHING. Cranked them up all the way. Nothing. Dragged PJ back with me. He was all JESUS. Can you believe that roar?

I just can't hear them and now I'm wondering what other sounds are gone.