The Jar Effect

I wrote a song that transforms the listener into a glass jar. I threw it together on a synthesizer. Everyone thinks I used maracas for percussion, but it’s a box of raisins. The song sounds like background noise, like air conditioning. The jar effect lasts two minutes, perfect for jokes you want to play on your boss or your husband. Here’s a secret: being a glass jar is boring. You’re in a vacuum, devoid of thought and action. When you are transformed into a glass jar, there’s nothing to do except wait to be filled with a liquid, solid,
or gas. This is impossible, because while experiencing the jar effect, your lid does not open. You have to remain an empty glass jar for two minutes. A group of teenage gangsters obtained a copy of my song. They wanted to break into a local radio station, hold the DJ hostage, and make him play the song. They wanted drivers on the interstate to turn into glass jars. They wanted people having sex and listening Led Zeppelin rock-blocks to turn into a pair of glass jars, one on top of the other, bumping lids. The teenagers hadn’t listened to the song. They didn’t know the jar effect only works if you listen to the song while wearing headphones. It was a TV journalist who first called it glassing. Maybe she called it jarring. Teenage gangsters don’t name things. They sit in a circle, in someone’s mother’s basement, passing a pair of headphones around, waiting for the jar effect to take place, so everyone can run their hands along the smooth
sides. They don’t call it glassing or jarring or the jar game or the jar effect. They don’t call it anything at all.