The Lint Filter Sounds Like Donkey Kong, and So Does The Kitchen Sink Mat

May 13, 2021

1

Do you ever, in the midst your everyday activities, hear Donkey Kong? I do. I hear him all the time. Specifically, I hear the sound he makes in Mario Tennis for the N64 when he wins a point. Or maybe it's the sound when he loses a point. It's a bit fuzzy, the memory.

This is not a sound that plays in my head. I hear it out loud. Physical objects in my world make noises that sound like Donkey Kong playing tennis.

I've never recorded these sounds and compared them with the corresponding Mario Tennis samples. I may not have a job, but I still have certain standards RE the use of my time. However, if I were to do such a thing, I might find, much to my chagrin, that the sound of my finger scraping across the lint filter of our clothes dryer doesn't sound anything like Donkey Kong celebrating a forehand winner. Scientifically speaking, I mean. The waves would be different lengths.

But I hear Donkey Kong when I scratch my fingernail on the lint filter. I hear him as clear as day.

Last week, I rubbed my sock-clad foot across the mat in front of our kitchen sink. The Imp was with me in the kitchen. "That sounded like Donkey Kong!" I yelled.

"I didn't hear anything," she said.

I gritted my teeth. It sounded like Donkey Kong, when he's rolling on the court after winning the Mushroom Cup. It really did.

I tried making the Donkey Kong sound with my mouth once. I wanted to express it to someone. I failed. I think, in order to make this sound, I would have to somehow blow air into the back of my sinuses, explode my nostrils, pop my skull, and then the air escaping out of my ears would make the Donkey Kong sound. It sounds a little bit like a gorilla laughing, and a little bit like a gorilla grunting in frustration. That's why I can't remember whether it's a celebratory sound, or a disappointed sound. It also doesn't sound like a gorilla at all.

It's the kind of sound that didn't and couldn't exist until the Nintendo 64 was created. It's a specifically early-3D, mid-90s sound chip sort of sound. You can hear that it's supposed to be a gorilla. It's a gorilla exclaiming in reaction to the outcome of a tennis rally. It's a gorilla who wears a tie. It's a gorilla whose father famously stole a princess while overcome with violent, animal lust, and yet has been graciously accepted into the polite society of said princess's royal court. He is a gorilla; he is also a tennis player. He feels the emotions all tennis player's feel. Sometimes, he is happy, because he finally hit that perfect backhand. Other times, he is upset. 'When did that net grow so tall?' he asks, via jumbled grunt.

I'm thinking about it again, and the sound I hear when I scrape my fingernail on the lint filter is definitely the sound Donkey Kong makes when he's hitting a very intense shot. I'm hearing the victory sound in my head right now; it's much more screamy. It's more akin to what we could call laughter. The sound when he makes an intense shot is "wurbobwleoo." It sounds kind of like when you scratch your fingernail on a lint filter.

2

I once walked into the Tim Hortons in my hometown. I was on a lunch break. I was working at the Shopper's Drug Mart next to the Tim Hortons. When I walked in, I saw a person I had gone to high school with. He was standing in line. We'll call him Tom, for the purpose of this particular story.

I had known Tom in kindergarten. I was good friends with Tom in first grade. Then, Tom switched schools. I remember that when he told me, he was sitting on top of his desk, in the northeast corner of the classroom. It was late May, or early June. I remember also that I was shocked. I did not know that people were allowed to change schools.

Tom and I were good friends, and then we weren't. Then, we went to high school together. During high school, we never spoke to each other. This is the history of Tom, as far as I am concerned.

I got in line behind Tom. I looked down at my phone. My turn came, and I ordered my food. I went to wait at the counter. I looked up, and saw Tom waiting at the other counter. There were two counters. I saw him, and I averted my eyes. There was nothing for us to talk about. There was no reason even for us to acknowledge each other's presence. I wanted to avoid the possibility of us having to acknowledge that we weren't acknowledging each other's presence. I waited for my sandwich.

My sandwich arrived. I picked it up. As I was leaving, I took one last glance across to the other counter. I was leaving now. I was safe.

The man at the other counter was not Tom.

It was Jerry.

No, that's a joke. It was someone who I don't know.

The someone who I don't know did not even look like Tom. The apparition of Tom had been fully and completely a product of my memory. And yet, I had seen him not once, but twice! Do you remember the phrase: 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me'? Well, shame on me, I guess! Still seems a pretty nasty trick!

3

So, we have Fake Tom, and we have Donkey Kong. Two instances where I have developed a false perception of the world by using my memory to fill in information that my other senses, for whatever reason, could not be gathered to collect.

When we think about my hearing Donkey Kong, it immediately leads to certain fundamental questions: what are the limits of human perception? How much of our experience is not a reaction to stimuli at all, but simply a superimposition of memory where the stimuli should be? To react meaningfully to all the stimuli that reach us would be absurd; it would take more brain than we've got. So it makes sense that shortcuts are developed where common images/sounds are filled in from our memory.

But how much capacity do we truly have for this memory information? These sounds — my fingers on the lint filter and my sock on the kitchen mat — are unique. They are unique, perhaps, in the entire universe. The specific frictions that manifest each time I rub my fingernail against the lint filter have never appeared before. And yet, I don't hear them as specific frictions. I hear them as a sound effect from a tennis game I played on the Nintendo 64 when I was seven.

We all know the common refrain: "Why does my mind retain this useless information from my childhood, but I can't remember [honk honk honk something about school, etc]?" I don't mind that this Donkey Kong sound is in my brain. It's a funny sound. If I had the choice, I'd keep it there. I just wonder how much I am missing: on a daily basis, how many new, unique sounds are reaching my ears, only to be converted into sounds that I've heard before? When was the last time I truly heard something new? The Donkey Kong noise sticks out to me because it is so jarring, and so unlike anything you would expect to hear in real life, but I imagine my brain is converting mundane sounds into equally mundane sounds all the time without my noticing it.

Then, we have Fake Tom. For a period of a few minutes, I was convinced that this man — who, I will repeat, looked nothing like Tom — was Tom. I imagined Tom into existence, and utterly convinced myself. It was not until I had fully reckoned with and accepted the consequences of Tom's presence in the Tim Horton's that I realized that he was not present.

We can seat ourselves on our evolutionary psychology armchair and speculate on such phenomena. We can say something about movements and changes being more important to cognize than stationary objects we see all day. Alright, fair enough. We fill in the background from memory, and keep our eyes/ears out for changes. This can lead to optical illusions, whereby a half-cognized new object is treated as background and converted to an old object.

I saw on television the other day that certain snails have developed unique colours/designs for their shells in order to hide from birds. When birds hunt for food, they use images in their brain as comparison points to determine what is and isn't food. The snails are unique; they don't match the food images.

So, Tom exists in my head as a person image. There's some emotional connection to my past involved there. I see a blur in my peripheral vision. I can't tell what it is. It's person-shaped. Maybe it's person-wearing-a-hat-shaped. Quick mathematics determine that this person must be relatively Tom-height, judging by the distance. Tom wears hats, and Tom is Tom-height. Reflexively, Tom is placed in my vision. This all happens instantaneously.

This all makes sense. But what about Donkey Kong?

I am willing to accept many (but not all) scientific theories regarding the development of the human brain, or animal brains in general. These theories can be beautiful. They can teach us how to use our own brain. They can teach us how not to let others use our brain.

But what about Donkey Kong?

I know that the lint filter is not Donkey Kong. I know that even when it sounds like Donkey Kong. But I can't hear my lint trap as anything other than Donkey Kong. At the end of my encounter at Tim Horton's, I looked up and I recognized my mistake. In recognizing my mistake, I saw the real person who was stood there. It just took a bit of focus. I just had to pay attention.

The Donkey Kong sound never goes away. It keeps coming back. It comes back because it doesn't actually sound like anything. It's not a real sound; in that respect, it can sound like anything, and anything can sound like it. I fear for a day when all sounds I hear will become Donkey Kong, from the birds outside my window to the music from my guitar. One day, I will lay down in bed, and instead of "good night," I will hear "wurbobwleoo." Who is to say that this can't happen? Who is to say where the laziness of my mind will end? Why bother with new sounds at all, when you can just fill it all up with Donkey Kong?

I've said it before - "It's best not to pay attention to such things." I am dangerously close to a precipice; to fall off would be to fall into a world populated exclusively by Fake Toms and Donkey Kongs. As soon as I start to doubt myself, and my senses, this precipice looms into view.

My lint filter sounds like Donkey Kong. So does the kitchen sink mat. Also, Fake Tom is Donkey Kong.

Maybe it's best to leave it at that.