On The 'Oh.' Humidifier

I have lived with the 'Oh.' Humidifier for four months. It arrived in the first week of October, and I have not turned it off since. At twelve-minute intervals, regardless of the hour, it issues a soft, single-syllable exhalation into the corner of my bedroom. "Oh." There is nothing else to it. There is never anything else to it.

In the first week, I heard each one. I counted them, unintentionally, the way one counts train cars at a crossing. By the second week, I had begun to miss some of them, the way one eventually stops noticing a clock. By the third week, I no longer heard any of them, but I knew, at the edge of my attention, that they were occurring.

What I came to understand is that the device is not making a statement. It is not commenting on my evening or my habits or the weather. It is making the sound a person makes when they read one mildly disappointing sentence in an otherwise unremarkable book. That sound, repeated every twelve minutes for four months, has a specific effect on a room. I have not yet decided whether the effect is good.

The humidifier functions normally in every other respect. The air in the room is soft. I sleep well. I am writing this paragraph at 11:46 PM, and in approximately two minutes, the device will say oh. and I will, I think, hear it.