Based upon Melissa's recommendation, the wife and I rented Am�lie, a subtitled French film. Today I got to watch it, twice. The second time with the wife, which was more fun. It reminded me of an entry I'd been meaning to write for about a month, now.

If you know the film, you'll know why.

Frank and his wife live far from town, alongside a busy highway (for our state, which means you'll average maybe a vehicle every couple miles), just before it Ts into another, considerably busier highway. Frank has been a friend for literally decades. Comes to almost all our meetings and open houses, and a real pleasure to meet and visit at any encounter.

Last year the highway folks repaved the highways by Frank's home. And added three rumble strips to the lane next to their driveway to wake any sleepy driver before they reached the stop sign and found out their stretch of road is about to end, and they've got to turn right or left.

A wise engineering move, I'm sure.

But we can hear semis when they slip onto the wake-up strips along the shoulders of the interstate, a good half-mile from our house, so I wondered how annoying it would be to have to listen to "brrrrrrup... brrrrrup... brrrrrup" every time a vehicle came down your road.

Well, on the opening weekend of the local deer season, I got to find out. Was in Frank's shed, extracting lymph nodes for a CWD test from a hunter's deer, and I heard it several times.

"Brrrrrrup... brrrrrup... brrrrrup". "Brrrrrrup... brrrrrup... brrrrrup".

Heard it again, not loud, but not faint either, when I was in their dining room.

"Brrrrrrup... brrrrrup... brrrrrup".

Funny thing was, neither Frank nor his wife paid it any mind at all. After a year, they were completely enured to it. Their minds had moved it into the background noise of life. It was that night that the idea struck me.

What would their subconscious minds do if the sound wasn't a neat, predictable "brrrrrrup... brrrrrup... brrrrrup"?

I've only been down that road a handful of times since then. And the oncoming lane, easily well visible ahead, hasn't always been empty. But when it was, all it took was a simple veer of the steering wheel, and what Frank and his wife heard in the back of their minds was:

"Brrrrrrup... brrrrrup... ...".

And silence.

I can imagine their subconscious minds hanging on to those sounds, waiting for the third ""brrrrrup" that never comes.

Maybe in a year or two I'll ask him if they noticed.