A funny thing about QUIET

Our home is strangely quiet.  Strangely, because we both grew up in households where yelling (for good or bad reasons) was the norm.

In my childhood home, there was only one parent and three kids.  My mom had to do a lot of yelling to stay on top of 3 very loud and headstrong children.

She would yell to call us to sit for a meal, she would yell to keep us from fighting each other, she would yell to get us to move from whatever part of the house we were in to where she was.  I never really noticed how much yelling there was involved until I lived a few months with an aunt and her family.  There was no yelling there!  I figured because there was only one child in the house (my cousin) there was very little high volume (noise).

It wasn't until one of my good friends had children and I saw how she interacted with her kids that I realized the number of children does not determine the noise volume in the house.

Since I lived alone for many years before my honey and I met there was no yelling (no one to yell at) in my home.  When we began to live together there was only one special request from my honey.  Yep, no yelling.  In a small apartment it would take little effort to walk across and speak to one another.  It took some getting used to.  I found it unbelievably difficult not to give a quick holler to get his attention and NOT HAVE TO walk ALL THE WAY OVER to say something.  Ok, it was more than difficult.  It was right down a pain in the butt!

It took time to get used to, but now I appreciate it very much.  I have actually thought about how loud other people's homes are.  I have seen members of my family carry on with that yelling habit and honestly, it makes me very uncomfortable witnessing it.  I never know if they are irritated at one another or they are just LOUD!

So for now we enjoy a "quiet life" where the only things loud in the house are my honey occasional  blasting Rush (or some other classic band) in the stereo or my blasting of the T.V. trying to listen to the morning news while I am drying my hair in the bathroom..