Wild Elephants

I'm not sure how I gave birth to such noisy children. I'm rather a quiet person myself, if you don't count when I'm souped up on Margaritas. And so is my husband. He yells when I lock my keys in the car, but I've learned to expect that.

It's pretty much a new parent's first hard lesson on the unnatural physics of kids. That a 7-lb. bundle of joy can make more noise than a medium-sized band of drunken gypsies defies all explanation. But they can. And they can keep it up, too. For years! Incidentally, this exact comparison holds true with respect to GAS, as well. But I digress.

They really REALLY like their voices, is the problem. We don't start hating our voices till we're older and hear them played back on a tape recorder. That's when about ¾ of the population retreat to meek conversational volume, and the rest go into the military or become high school teachers.

Even when my children are "being quiet," they're noisy. Sometimes I try to play the Silent game, to see who can hold out the longest. Their combined personal record is 9 seconds, but they average more like 2 or 3. That's when they start comparing who's quieter. Which usually involves screaming and poking.

My daughter can cut hair with her whisper. She's got the part about suspending the tonal portions, but hasn't figured out that an accompanying reduction in overall volume is called for. She hisses at a respectable defcon 3.

Defcon 1 kicks in only in enclosed echo-y places, like public restrooms. That's when it's most fun, apparently, to laugh it up in C, two octaves above middle C. Inner-ear cilia be damned. We've had our little discussion, MANY times about echo manners, but it doesn't seem to help. Writhing on the floor, clasping my itching ears seems to work a bit better.

I'd heard that there was a correlation between the amount of ballyhooing you do during childbirth, and the noisiness of the ensuing child. This must be a wives tale, because I hardly made ANY noise. Besides some dainty moaning, there was only just a wee bit of bellowing when they told me they'd "missed the window" for my epidural (which is what I get, I guess, for having the lack of foresight to go in to labor on a major holiday.)

This lack of foresight has plagued me continually. For example, just this past Christmas, Santa brought a karaoke machine for the kids. Santa ought to have her head examined.

But it's not just the VOICES that get you. My 28-lb. daughter can clomp around upstairs like a lumberjack. The two kids together bear a remarkable audio resemblance to a herd of wild elephants.

And the ONLY time they're quiet, (I bet you think it's when they're sleeping. Nope. They snore. Like hibernating bears with deviated septums.) is when they know they're in BIG TROUBLE. Like the time when they flooded the bathroom.

It was almost worth it, for the peace.