I wandered into the tinfoil hat Wikipedia entry from an old entry over at Tom’s place, and that led me to the entry on the microwave auditory effect, whereby directed microwaves can cause modulatable clicks in the inner ear. It triggered a memory of one of the most amazing things I have ever seen and heard.

My dad exclaimed, “There it is again! Oh man, it’s LOUD!”

We turned and looked at him in puzzlement. He exclaimed in surprise, “You can’t hear that?”

No, we told him. What on earth could he be talking about? He held his hand to his jaw and continued to exclaim.

Finally he got over his surprise and annoyance enough to tell us, “I’m receiving a radio transmission in my fillings, and it is so loud that it’s vibrating my whole jaw.”

We reacted with derision and disbelief, of course.

He was insistent. “No, I’m not kidding! It’s happened before, but this is the most powerful I’ve ever felt it. In fact…”

He paused.

“I bet if I open my mouth wide, you’ll be able to hear it.”

We laughed. I went over to my dad, and put my ear to his open mouth.

The NPR top-of-the-hour news was clearly audible, if with a buzzing and tinny timbre.

In surprise I turned to look deep into my father’s mouth, suspecting some sort of practical joke. A wide variety of silvery fillings gleamed out at me as the news continued.

Here’s a different person’s first-hand account. Aparently, Lucille Ball claimed to have aided in the capture of a Japanese spy due to her experience of the same phenomenon.

4 thoughts on “Transmissions”

  1. I was buying the story until you mentioned that he was receiving the NPR station. What, you academic types can’t pull in some fine country music on yer fillings?

  2. I assume it’s because in the two U.S. towns I lived in most when growing up, the local university radio station was the most powerful FM signal in our neighborhoods.

    So, I suppose, no, no country for the profs, more or less. Certainly not in the seventies and early eighties.

  3. I had my braces put on to the, er, strains of country music. My orthodontist had the world’s largest collection of plaid pants. (No, really, he did.) Now I am having horrible life memory flashbacks.

    God, wouldn’t it be terrible to hear Korva Coleman say “I’m Korva Coleman” through somebody’s teeth? Or hear some sedate Boccherini compositions? You’d have to eat to drown out the voices in your teeth.

Comments are now closed.