Has a silence ever told you something before you knew what it meant?

I spent forty years reading silence as a signal — radar screens, radio gaps, the pause before someone says 'I'm fine.' Now retirement hands me silence with nothing attached to it, and I keep expecting it to mean something. It might just be quiet. I'm curious — have you had a silence that turned out to be a message, and one that was just empty, and do you ever mix the two up?