Living with Loud Talkers

Remember that episode of Seinfeld with the “low talker”? Kramer’s girlfriend talked at an inaudible volume and Jerry unwittingly agreed to wear the Puffy Shirt on network television. It was comedy gold. 

Well, we have the opposite situation in our house full of boys. We have loud talkers in droves. To these kids, anything worth saying is worth saying at monster truck rally announcer volume level. 

The 2-year-old is particularly bad at this, and the 4-year-old is particularly misleading in how loud he is. 

The 2-year-old hasn’t mastered the art of the whisper, or talking at a modified volume to any appreciable extent. He thinks he’s talking in a normal tone, and in a sense he is since his volume is always at 11. But it’s not the societal norm. 

The 4-year-old is tricky because he’s very quiet in public and with people outside the family. But once you’re on his turf, he’s an explosive loud-talking machine. I’ve seen many a surprised look on the face of visitors who come to our house and experience the 4-year-old’s machine gun burst ambush of words.

And all this loud talking feeds on itself like a tremendous audio feedback loop. Each kid is talking louder and louder to be heard over the din until helicopters can pass by our house undetected. I find myself talking loud just to cut through the noise. 

I grew up with four siblings and recall a similar environment. Although, every now and then there would be a lull, when you could actually talk in a normal voice. Or, you know, think. 

We were at the dinner table one night and it was a rollicking affair as usual. However, right when the conversation was getting loudest, there was a sudden lull. 

My mom was offering cheese to someone at the table and bellowed, “DO YOU WANT SOME CHEESE?” in her talking-to-be-heard-through-the-chaos voice. But it was super quiet so it just seemed like she really wanted someone to try the cheese. 

Sometimes I wish for lulls like this. Even if it left me shouting over nothing, a break in the ruckus would be nice. Maybe this is why we do so much outside as a family. Things aren’t so loud when the kids’ voices have the entire state of Texas to travel into. 

This is usually where I consider the upside to whatever topic I’m writing about. But I’m not sure there really is much of an upside to all this loud talking. That it’ll eventually impact my hearing and it won’t sound so loud? That it’ll increase my chances of being offered cheese at a high volume? 

Well, at least they're not low talkers. Because I definitely can’t pull off the puffy shirt look.