Children can be a detriment to one's health

My youngest son was screaming his face off last night (sometimes my other son does that too, but not last night, thankfully). I was holding my son while said screaming was happening, which means the sound, and not a pretty one at that, was traveling right into my ear.

I thought to myself (because no one would have heard me if I vocalized the thought) that there must be some inherent danger to my health and well being, as I was forced to endure this incessant noise. Somehow noise just isn’t the best descriptor for the high-pitched sound that emanates from deep inside this screaming kid. It’s kind of like when I try to explain the snoring sound that roared and grunted from this animal-like person that I had to sleep above in an Austrian youth hostel. Sometimes there isn’t a word that can adequately describe something. This is the case with my son.

I handed my son to my wife and walked away.

“What are you doing,” she asked.

“I’m refusing unsafe work…”

Wife looks perplexed

“…it’s in my contract that I can refuse unsafe work, and according to the latest worksafe regulations your son’s (insert glare from wife)—I mean, our son’s screaming is unsafe.”

Forget listening to loud music, or working next to a jet (now, how do I get that job), or riding a jack hammer like a pogo stick, the son’s decibel crushing scream is ruining what little hearing I have left. And my wife wonders why I can’t hear her.

After pawning son off to wife, I made a hasty retreat to bed, so I could recover from the relentless ringing in my ears. (Okay, before you all think I'm shirking my fatherly duties, my wife can cheat by shoving her mamories in son's mouth for a feed, which usually keeps him quiet)

Then he started again. And making matters worse, federal regulations require a baby monitor to be installed throughout our house, which seems pointless considering someone would have to be deaf not to hear some shrieking baby, especially this one. “Would someone shut this kid up,” I wanted to yell. But I knew that no one would hear me.

I’ve now resorted to disassociation. We were at a townhouse Christmas party last weekend, and my wife was talking to our neighbour, whose very quiet baby was born one day before our shrieking son.

“So, do you hear him,” my wife asked.

What she really wanted to know was, do you hear him through the walls of our house?

Yes, sometimes,” our neighbour reluctantly offered.


“Oh yes, I can here him too,” I said, pretending not to be associated with wife and son.