Barbaric Yawp - NEW!

We're unassuming people, Ozzie and I. We don't like to impose ourselves on others. We don't trouble friends for rides to and from the airport. If someone cuts in front of us on the road, we don't lean on the horn (well...Ozzie might). At BYOB's and potlucks, we always bring more than our fair share. So it causes us no small amount of distress to know that we annoy the people who live downstairs. Boy, do we make noise. Stand in the living room of the first floor apartment and you'll agree: we're like a herd of elephants.

These aren't just downstairs neighbors actually, they're our tenants. And we try, really we do. We don't wear shoes in the house. If we have to go into our kitchen, which is above the tenant's master bedroom, at night, we tiptoe. We've taken to preparing the kids' lunches the afternoon before, to avoid being in the kitchen more than necessary late at night or early in the morning. And now, since we're between tenants, we're installing sound insulation. But it's hopeless. Not even the latest and greatest in acoustic absorption is a match for Sasha and Mo, a whole category of noise unto themselves.

While we've always warned prospective tenants about the noise level, and people often reassure us that our footfalls are normal, a typical and expected pitfall of city life, what we hear most frequently is this: Teach your kids not to make noise. Simple, right? No problem. Doesn't cost a cent or require the involved labor of soundproofing. Teach your kids not to make noise. Whenever I hear this, the always present knot of frustration in my belly tightens. They have NO idea.

No idea that Ozzie and I are constantly, and I mean constantly, reminding, chiding, yelling at Sasha and Mo: "Don't run!" "Don't scrape your chair along the floor." "No balls in the house." "DON'T JUMP off the furniture!" We are marshalls of noise pollution, I tell you. We employ all manner of positive reinforcements: "I notice you made only appropriate noises for the last hour." "I like how gently you pulled out that chair." We praise. We reward. But this works only just so much. Pretty soon our urgings for quiet are tuned out and Sasha and Mo's attentions turn to the urgings of their bodies, which have them careening through the house and jumping off chairs with reckless abandon. They do have AD/HD, afterall. By definition, they're going to forget--and revert to their default behavior, hyperactivity. Should I get angry at them for who they are?

I remember once telling my therapist I had too many needs. Like needing to exercise and needing time to write and needing to talk about everything and needing therapy! I figured myself to be monstrously selfish. My therapist responded, "So? You have needs. You're human. So what?" Oh.

To me, this was BIG news. You mean it's okay to have needs? Somewhere along the way, my being a conscientious member of the community morphed into being reflexively apologetic for taking up space on the planet. It was a further revelation to me to take this idea a step further and acknowledge that it's okay for my kids to have needs too. Sometimes that involves making noise. Sometimes they need to break dance to Gnarls Barkley. Or to leap through the house in joyful abandon like Maria in "The Sound of Music" bounding through her alpine meadow. So what?

Yes, why not take up space...make people aware of us...make a difference in the world? Like Walt Whitman, I say, let us sound our "barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world"!

That...and buy an ultra sound-absorbing rug pad.