Garage Sessions – One Saturday morning, my teenage daughter Emily sang in the bathroom with the kind of tone-deaf power only a true artist can muster. I told her, honestly, her singing was “flatter than the fattest pancake ever conceived.” The silence that followed could’ve shattered glass.
She wasn’t pleased. Cue slammed doors and Instagram stories about shattered confidence.
To make peace, I butchered “Bohemian Rhapsody” at karaoke night, which actually made her laugh.
Now Emily sings only in the garage “to protect the family.” I say it’s for acoustics; she says it’s self-preservation.
Peace had returned to the household. The doors no longer trembled with teenage treble, and my ears—sweet, battered soldiers that they were—finally stopped twitching like war veterans during fireworks.
Emily had moved her daily operatic assaults to the garage, which she now called “The Studio.” She’d hung up a disco ball (despite no dancing being involved), painted one wall neon pink, and declared the old lawnmower “a vibe killer.”
I didn’t argue. I just threw on noise-cancelling headphones and silently wept with gratitude.
But Emily, in a rare moment of empathy (or perhaps guilt-induced generosity after the Pancake Comment Incident), decided she would now focus on improving her voice.
Specifically, her high notes.
Now, Emily’s idea of “working on high notes” was less Mariah Carey and more fire alarm with emotional baggage. And she did it with the microphone volume cranked up so high, even bats in the neighbouring county filed noise complaints.
Unfortunately, this noble pursuit of audio violence coincided—unbeknownst to us—with a very significant event:
A highly advanced extraterrestrial ship had entered Earth’s orbit.
The aliens, beings of great intelligence and even greater optimism, had come in peace, bearing gifts: intergalactic medical technology, renewable energy sources, and an iPhone charger that actually lasts longer than a month.
They’d been listening closely, scanning for human communication. Detecting sound frequencies from Earth, they locked onto what they assumed was the primary diplomatic channel.
And that, dear reader, is when Emily hit C-sharp. Or what I think was C-sharp—it could also have been a goose being strangled inside a wind tunnel.
To us, it was just a Tuesday.
To the aliens? It was war.
The signal surged through their quantum receivers, overloaded their universal translators, and caused one of their onboard AI systems to self-destruct out of what it described as “emotional trauma.”
Transcript of the ship’s internal log:
“Captain, we are under attack by what appears to be a focused acoustic energy weapon. It is shrill, erratic, and… oh dear, it’s trying to modulate.”
“Abort contact! Reverse warp! Engage cloaking! This species is clearly unstable!”
And just like that, they were gone.
Poof.
The first alien visitors in millennia had fled, whimpering into the cosmos, convinced that humanity’s first response to peaceful contact was to yodel them into submission.
Meanwhile, back in the garage, Emily emerged, pleased with her progress.
“I think I shattered a glass!” she beamed.
“You nearly shattered international relations,” I muttered, checking the dog, who was now hiding under the garden gnome and had developed a nervous tic.
Later that night, a strange news bulletin flashed across the screen:
“NASA reports unexplained spike in extra-terrestrial traffic suddenly vanishing from Earth’s orbit. Scientists baffled.”
Emily turned to me. “Weird timing, huh?”
“Very weird,” I said, turning the volume on the TV up to drown out the eerie sound of her warming up again with scales that made the cat walk into a wall.
And so, while the world may never know just how close we came to universal brotherhood (or abduction), one thing is certain:
My daughter’s voice is now officially registered as an interstellar deterrent.
And I still haven’t told her about the shattered satellite dish.
We want to hear your what you have to say