Once upon a time a young girl was looking out her window. She could see her neighbours, as well as hear them, even though they were separated by 200 meters. No, she couldn’t read lips and no, she wasn’t just making up their conversation, she could genuinely hear the words they were pronouncing.
Her parents didn’t understand how this could be, and thought that maybe she was special, and that they might be able to get some money out of her ability. They took her to various doctors, but they only checked her ears and her brain, and could never find anything abnormally wrong, or right, with her. So for the time being, she was just a girl with extremely good hearing. Her parents, however, didn’t believe this was it. In fact, the whole affair started to annoy them as they never had any privacy with her in the house. Their daughter was also not happy and would frequently be bothered when her parents were clearly trying to whisper to each other, but were, in fact, speaking so loudly she could hear every word of whatever blasphemy they were going on about. This made her parents feel self-conscious with anything they said, and just walking around the house became a burden. The poor girl had tried everything, from getting reinforced glass windows to earmuffs and super insulating headphones to no avail.
After some time dealing with this “impairment” her parents took her to another doctor for a full check-up. The results weren’t good: she had tuberculosis, hence her improved hearing. Her parents were saddened, as it finally dawned upon them that their daughter was normal, or rather, even worse, their daughter was extremely sick, and all they had thought of was how they could get money out of her ears. The mother had noticed her getting increasingly thinner, and her constant fatigue, but thought it was because of everything she had to deal with, what with having to listen to everything everyone around her was saying. This upset her and her husband deeply, but the girl was happy she finally had an answer to her ailment and could see peace and quiet at the end of the tunnel: no more listening to her parents’ intimate conversations, her neighbours’ incessant arguments, all the animals in the garden chirping and grunting, even the falling and landing of the leaves from the trees in the garden.
The next day she started taking the antibiotics and, as if taking placebo, she immediately felt better, regardless if she would be taking those drugs for the next 6 to 12 months or not. She was finally happy and on the way to being normal again.
She looked out the window in her room, observed her neighbours: they were quietly sitting on their sofa reading. Everything was calm. ‘Soon, it will always be like this... and I just can’t wait!’
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