A New Level of Annoying

Kids do a lot of annoying things. From clicking pens to tapping on the side of the table with their feet to bickering with each other, being a dad is one long challenging lesson in patience.

And they keep increasing the challenges. Sometimes I can’t help but think there’s a competition for the kids to come up with the most absurdly annoying activity. There are annoyances that are associated with activity. Think bouncing a ball off the roof when a parent is trying to concentrate. These I can understand. The annoyance is really the side effect or collateral damage to a presumably reasonable activity.

But then there are the annoyances that truly seem created for the sole purpose of annoying. The 4-year-old slapping his feet on the tile floor when he runs down the hall is a great example. This isn’t the pitter patter of little feet I was promised. It’s more like the crack of a whale fin slapping the top of the ocean – on repeat.

He’s clearly doing it on purpose, and it drives me crazy. For one, I don’t understand how this doesn’t hurt the soles of his feet. I’m sure it would stop of its own accord if it did. But also, the sound of the “slap” must be at the precise resonate frequency of my ear drum and it hits my auditory system, well, like a slap.

Until recently, this (and chewing with your mouth open) would have been the easy picks for the most annoying behaviors my kids do. But they’re both moving down on the podium as we have a new champion in the competition for most annoying activity.

Do you know that Irish Sea shanty, “What shall we do with a drunken sailor?” If you don’t know it by name you almost certainly would recognize the tune if you heard it. I can’t hum it to you on paper so take a minute to look if up if you want to experience the full effect of this column  

The 13-year-old heard that tune playing somewhere and it caught his attention. So he went to the piano and figured out how to pick out the melody. And then he started to play it. Over. And over. And over…

It’s not surprising it caught his ear. This tune is what you call an ear worm, the sort of tune people can’t get out of their head. Once you hear it, you’ll be hearing it in your head all day -- “Early in the mor-ning!”

I too am hearing it all day. I can’t tell anymore if I’m hearing it in my head or if those catchy notes are actually floating across the house from the piano. It’s like that Seinfeld episode where George can’t stop singing “Master of the House” from Les Misérables and Jerry tells him the composer Schumann went crazy after getting a musical note stuck in his head. George is afraid the same will happen to him and “Schumann!” becomes a byword and a warning for the rest of the episode.

Anyway it’s a funny episode. And now it’s my life. I’d almost welcome some foot slapping sounds down the hallway to drown out the tune. Almost.