A Storm of Epic Proportions
By Jeff Gamble

As I type this sentence, there is a three-year-old child – my niece - in the next room, screaming bloody murder. If you couldn’t see her and could only hear what’s going on, you might think she was being tortured. You might picture some diabolical fiend doing everything in his power to make her reveal secrets only a three-year-old could have. With the way she’s unleashing her shrieks, it would seem fitting that this torturing maniac would probably have to be wearing a black rubber body suit and goggles in order to keep the spraying blood from staining his clothes and getting into his eyes. Of course there is no actual torture underway though. My niece has merely been told that she’s staying the night at Grandpa and Grandma’s house tonight - a revelation that she doesn’t like. And by the way she’s shrieking to the point of losing her voice, it’s clear that she doesn’t like it one bit.

As I type this sentence, the cries have reached hysterics. Actually, they aren’t really cries so much as they are all-out screams. As most people know, small children are capable of producing incredible volumes, and right now anybody who is living within a quarter mile of this home is being reminded of that mind-numbing fact. Childless couples living within earshot are also being reminded to use birth control.

I have put on my headphones and turned on some music in an attempt to block out the wailing, but music serves as no functional armor against the power of this child’s lungs. Grandpa and Grandma are currently using every diversionary tactic in the book - from trying to speak reason, to offering her exclusive beachfront property as part of her inheritance – all in an attempt to distract her from her displeasure, but this clearly isn’t getting it done.

As I type this sentence, I can hear that Grandpa and Grandma have exhausted all logical means of dealing with this fit, and have reverted to the never-popular-but-sometimes-necessary “clown” tactics. Nobody likes to have to revert to clown tactics because it’s a demeaning and risky enterprise. It consists of abandoning any sense of dignity and making a complete ass of yourself through visual comedy. Occasionally it works, but more often than not it doesn’t, leaving you with a terrible sense of disgrace, and a child that’s still crying. “Wait, did I just take my off my shoe and hit myself in the butt with it while making monkey noises?”

Grandpa and Grandma are in the middle of clown tactics right now, and my heart goes out to them. We all know that they are above the Keystone Cop routine that they have been forced into, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and the volume that this child continues to produce more than qualifies.

As I type this sentence, my wife has just left the room and has entered the fray. It’s like the front line couldn’t penetrate the defenses, so somebody had to call in the air strike. Right now I hear her dropping her payload on the target, but nothing seems to be hitting the mark. All of this of course is bad news for me because if things don’t subside soon, I’ll be expected to help out as well.

Now the screaming has just simply lost all sense of purpose. It’s been close to fifteen minutes of nonstop glass-shattering hysterics, and since no mental or physical harm has occurred to really provoke it, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. At this point I’m pretty sure that if you could momentarily push a pause button on my niece and ask her why it is that she’s so upset, she’d tell you that she has absolutely no idea. Wailing like an agitated pterodactyl just seems like the right thing to do for her right now, so she’s going with it.

Yes, I understand that this is what small kids do. Naturally, before we ever learn to speak, crying like an insane person is the only way we can communicate. If we didn’t cry as babies, our parents wouldn’t know when we’re hungry, they wouldn’t know when we need our diaper changed, and they wouldn’t know how much we enjoy making them service our every need. As babies, crying is how we motivate others to do what we want.

And at this very moment, my niece’s fit is more or less a way of explaining her situation:
“Listen,” she’s saying, “I’m not comfortable with tonight’s sleeping arrangement. An arrangement - I might add – that was formulated behind my back. That aside though, I’m not telling people how to run things because the fact of the matter is that I am only three years old. So I not going to stand here, looking you in the eye, pretending like I have all the answers. But we definitely have a situation on our hands and I would really appreciate it if we all took a moment to think about what has happened, and consider whether or not that decision was made in everyone’s best interest. I think you all know where I stand, so now the question is – what are you going to do about it?”

Of course, all of that is being conveyed in her own special form of communication, which as far as I’m concerned is more effective than any million-dollar motivational speaker. And all of this leads to the obvious question: Why do we ever stop crying at all? Why aren’t we crying and screaming all day in our cubicles to get a better salary at work? How come we don’t just bawl and throw a fit on the floor when we’re in a hurry and the line at the grocery store is too long? If you’re not damaging anything, don’t you think people would service you as quickly as possible in order to get you to shut up or go away? I think I have a point here, and that it needs to be explored further. Stay tuned for my research results.

I suppose I could join this campaign in progress to stop my niece and liberate our ears and nerves, but I have good reason for my reluctance. It’s based on the fact that at this point in her three years of existence, this small person wants very little to do with me. So I don’t see where I would be an effective tool to calm her down. It may just be a phase, but it seems that despite her age, this small child more or less has her world sorted out between things she likes, and things she can do without. She has me in the “can do without” category. And although I don’t yet understand everything that everybody tells me here in Spain, I have understood her quite clearly on the occasions when she’s instructed me to leave her alone, not to touch her, and to go back to America with the rest of the imperialist swine.

As I type this sentence I can almost feel my wife sending me mental messages, and they are not laced with hearts and flowers. I can’t see what’s going on from here, but it sounds like the anti-screaming squadron has started an impromptu puppet show, utilizing anything within their grasp to create the funniest and most entertaining characters possible. If I just heard the last exchange correctly, Jose the Slipper just told Carmen the Salad Tongs that he’s running away from home to join the pajama circus. Carmen the Salad Tongs sounds like she’s up in arms about the whole idea. My niece, on the other hand, seems irate that Jose and Carmen are even in the same room with her. Looks like both objects are going to have to run away, and are going to need to do so as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, all of this ineffective effort means that if that kid doesn’t ease up in the next couple of minutes, I’m going to have to move in, and it’s not going to be pretty. It’s possible that I may get her to stop crying, but it may only be long enough for her to tell me to get out of her sight. And now as I type this I see my wife standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She’s not screaming, but she’s communicating just as effectively as the small, screaming child that I’m evidently about to confront.

Clown tactics, here I come.

- January 2, 2006