Endless Chatter

You are sitting in the middle of an auditorium before a concert starts. Around you, the cacophony of voices simmers and boils and eventually makes you want to scream "SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!" and then plug your ears and run screaming from the irritating, never-ending noise. And then, afterwards, you walk into the cool night and the silence envelopes you. Blessed, blessed quietness.

For the past hour, I have been answering emails, reading a message board, instant-messaging while submerged in the endless chatter that spews forth from my children. For background noise, they have a Pokemon movie playing. Periodically, I look over and say, "PLEASE! Be quiet! Sit still! Stop talking! You! Get out of this room!" It doesn't matter. They just never stop making noise, these children that God gave me. Me, the one who loves silence, the one who prefers solitude to crowds, the one who avoids parties, the one who'd rather read than make small-talk.

Real funny.

I used to torture myself when I was a child by trying to figure out which I'd rather be: deaf or blind. I would miss music, I decided, but blindness would be intolerable, because then I couldn't read. Now, I know for sure, that deafness would be the way to go. Peace and quiet.

(I also used to try to figure out the best death. I settled on drowning or freezing to death. I think drowning quickly would be the better of the two. I was a quirky child, with entirely too much thinking time on my hands!)

I loved when the children were babies, because despite the occasional crying, babies are pretty quiet. Well, when they aren't screeching and babbling. At least they didn't talk back, or as my twins said when they were kindergarteners, "back-sass." Nowadays, these kids are just plain loud. They don't nap like babies do. They just keep polluting the air with noise. Can something be done about this? Aren't there organizations that deal with the problem of noise pollution?

Well, now I hear the baby crying, so my break time has ended. Boy, do I feel refreshed.