Quiet And Shaky Voices

          My friend has a theory about old women's voices.
          Looking at it logically, he says, old women should have the loudest, most resonant voices of all. They have been talking the longest, they have a full lifetime’s worth of things to say and, as their hearing fades, their voices should adjust in volume to compensate.
          But they don’t. When women get old their voices turn quiet and shaky.
          The reason that they get so quiet and shaky, he says, isn’t because old women live to be old. It’s because they live to be older than everyone else.
          The vocal cords, like any other muscles in the body, are subject to the effects of atrophy and will weaken when not used. So as their husbands and partners die off and their circle of friends tightens in on them, so do their vocal cords.
          They die off.
          They tighten.
          That’s why when an old woman bumps into you at the supermarket, or thanks you for offering her your seat on the bus, or asks you to donate money for a poppy, you can barely make out a word she says.
          It’s all practice, he says, for the day that they become ghosts.