November 14th, 2006

Last night I woke to someone calling my name. This is one of those odd little unexplained and unexplainable things that happens to me now and then, though it hasn’t happened for a while. I like to imagine this sort of strangeness happens to everyone, or to at least a lot of ones, although I suppose its possible that it’s just me. What happens is this : I am asleep or completely absorbed in some activity and I hear someone calling my name, usually with a level of urgency. Sometimes it’s just once (as last night), sometimes it’s two or three times. Almost always it is my name and nothing more, but once when I was alone in my dorm at college it was my name followed by “Wake up!” When I get up and try to go find who might be calling, I’m either completely alone or the people in the house claim it was not they who called me.

When I was little and I would come running in asking,”Did you call me?”, my mom used to laugh at me and tell me that if I heard it again, I was to say “Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth.” My experience pretty closely follows Samuel’s, which I guess is one reason I think it must be a universal or at least common sort of experience.

Thing is I don’t ever hear anyone talking about this happening to them. Granted it’s a small thing, a trivial thing, but surely the people who have it happen to them find it as disconcerting and weird as I do. I literally hear someone say my name. Then no one around will admit to having called it. Synapse misfire or auditory hallucination or glitch in the matrix or voice of God, I’m kind of surprised no one’s coined a suitable French word for this experience.

Generally, I hear a generic male voice. In the past I’ve heard specific voices, like my mother’s. Last night it was my husband’s voice that called my name. I woke from a deep sleep, got up and out of bed, and called for him and he was like “What? what?” and I said “Did you call me?” and he said,”No, why would I call you?” He was puzzled. Then I crawled back into bed and said, sleepily, “You were using your worried voice.”

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