I’m slightly overjoyed with my floppy brown hat at the moment. I have trouble sleeping sometimes…okay, a lot of the time. At home I sleep in a very dark room. Any light keeps me up. Some sounds, like the sound of the dishwasher, hums me to sleep, but other sounds, like noises I don’t recognize, noises I want to investigate, or turn off, keep me alert.
The first night in Barbados I heard many sounds. Crickets, whistle frogs, the sound of the sea. All natural sounds that would normally pacify me to bed. Then, I heard a new sound. An industrial noise like the sound of a generator. The only thing I could fathom was that someone must be running a generator to work on one of the boats at sea. It wasn’t until the next groggy morning, my mother said, “It must be coming from a kite.”
“There is no way that sound is coming from a kite, Mom” I argued. I should have listened to the local. She walked outside and spotted the kite anchored to a neighbouring house, flying over head, humming powerfully down at me. I hum-bugged back, “You have got to be kidding me.”
I have now learned there is a special way the Islanders make kites, which produces a noise-maker called a “mad bull.” After a little research on-line I found I wasn’t the only one desperate for a pair of scissors to cut the mad bull down.
Between the indy race car noise flying over head, the bad karaoke hollering out towards another weekend night, and the spot lights around the beach house that can not be turned off, potential for sleep is not on my side.
But, finally, after two weeks of bull, I’m either going mad myself, or finally growing accustomed to the sound. Now, I just have to find a solution to the intruding lights. Then, I remembered my hat. My thick, dark, floppy brown hat. I wore it to bed last night, its flaps covering my eyes. Lights out! For the first time in weeks I slept like a baby.
As it nears bedtime again, I am beyond happy at the thought of my brown floppy hat, and the dreamy hope that another sound, dark, sleep awaits me.
