I'm a grown adult who flees at the sound of a child's voice

February 24, 2008|By Ross Werland

When walking with a host to be seated in a restaurant, I've had to veto the table choice a few times lately. The hosts were going to seat me next to families with small children.

The problem is decibels. I'm not sure glass shards fired at me would be any less unpleasant than a screeching child. I didn't decide that the sound is unpleasant; it's just unpleasant.

But I believe this has evolutionary roots.

Wouldn't it make perfect sense, out in our prehistoric jungle rife with danger, for a child's voice to repel other adults, especially male ones, who might otherwise want to terrorize a neighboring village and steal all the wildebeest jerky?

On the flip side, I believe a child's voice serves as an audio beacon to a parent. Typically, a mother or father can tune out most kids' voices, but when they hear the precise frequency of one of their own -- zap -- you've got one laser-guided parent.

This was true with my own boys, now grown. To this day, I might be in a store, and somewhere out of the void comes one of their voices. It's actually just some kid who speaks with the same timbre, but it gets my attention. It's a prehistoric paging device.

Yet I don't have to listen for kids' voices anymore -- my privilege for having successfully raised two kids all the way to adulthood.

Now, however, when other people's kids go shrill, it's the fingernails on the chalkboard. I can't help it. It's primal, and it's real.

I loved the sound of my children's voices. That was warm pudding. But I'm sure other guys in the vicinity felt differently. Thus, one of my earliest lessons to my children was decibel control. We spoke so softly that when I raised my voice to a normal speaking voice, they thought I was yelling. And I think most parents are on board with volume control.

Many, however, aren't. So while those parents are sitting there in the restaurant, enjoying their warm pudding and not caring whether anybody else gets pudding slopped all over them, I want to bolt from their village, which I never intended to sack anyway.

All that said, now word comes from New York that as smoking bans have cleared the quiet little bars of nicotine smog, parents with young children in tow are stopping in to socialize. Ladies and gentlemen, the reason we have quiet little bars is to get away from such things. Loud drunks get thrown out. What do you do with a loud kid? And don't say "vodka tonic."

My proposal: If we can't stop this kind of invasion in bars and restaurants, let's convert all the old smoking sections into "family sections" where they can be quarantined.

I know that for the parents who are raising civilized children, those who could, say, be quiet through a whole symphony concert, having to sit with the noisemakers will be difficult. But hey, one day soon, they will get to sit in the decibel-control section.

Until then, though, they will have to answer honestly when the host asks: "Shrieking or non?"