Sound Effects

When I was in kindergarten, I used to get picked up for school by my best friend. Every day, he and his mom would drive up to the house, honk the horn, and I would come running out of my front door. He would be, of course, in the front seat and so I would jump in the back... That's when the fun began...

I distinctly remember our adventures. Brian would man the co-pilot's seat, which, as you know, is the main gunner seat of the vehicle. From the back, I would take control of the missile launch. Every car we passed was the enemy, and we never left any survivors. The triggers to the guns were the little handles in the door way of the car, AKA Oh Crap! handles. We would jerk our arms, pretending that the guns that we were shooting had kick to them, launching our tiny bodies back. His mom was the pilot, and so, we always made sure that she was going the right way. So that we could get back to the USS Enterprise safely. These adventurous missions were always much more fun when it was snowing outside. The snow flakes would fly past the windshield, and it would look as though we were traveling at Mach speeds while we flew past the stars.

But, there was something more important. More important than who manned the gunner seat, more important than where the triggers were in the cockpit of the ship, and more important than where we were going....

The sound effects.

With every gun, there was a sound effect. With every turn of the wheel, there was a sound effect. With every enemy star cruiser soaring past us, there was a sound effect. The sound effects were crucial. If you didn't have the right sound for the right tool, the mission could be in jeopardy. With the wrong sound effects, the others might not know what you were doing, and therefore putting the whole crew at risk. The sound effects mattered most.

I took a semester of school up at Brigham Young University Idaho, and there I took a Spanish class. My teacher was incredible. He had lived in Venezuela for two years and was fluent in Spanish. He is an awesome guy. He once told the guys in the class, "If you ever find a girl who can make good sounding sound effects, she's a keeper no matter what."

Oh, the wisdom of his words.