Babel On, Babel Off: Ah, the pitter patter and chitter chatter

… of elementary-school kids across the street.

I often work at home, especially if the weather is gorgeous like it’s been the past few days, and I happen to live directly across the street from a 100–year-old elementary school. In fact, directly across the street from the school playground.

Brown School Playground from the couch (1)

That means noise. A lot of noise.

Now, personally, I actually find the noise of the little kids perpetually milling about in the playground and squealing away quite pleasant. Comforting, almost. A sort of “all’s right with the world” background noise.

There are two things I have never acquired the taste for, however:

The school always seems to have at least one little girl who is a real “screamer”. And I don’t just mean the usual happy squeals and shrieks. I mean this is a girl who sounds as though she’s just been pitched head-first off the top of a tall building. She always utters a long, drawn-out, top-of-her-lungs, high-pitched shreak that starts out high and then slowly and steadily lowers pitch. Honestly I am certain that if you were standing at the top of the grand canyon and had just pushed a little girl over the edge this is what you would hear. We’ve lived here 9 years now and it’s literally been every year: almost as if the school just has one on staff at all times. I can only assume that each little shrieking girl in turn has grown up and moved on, so that’s what makes it so amazing that there’s always one to
There also always seems to be a “barking boy”. And he doesn’t try to bark like a big dog. No woofs from him. Oh, no. It’s always squeaky, high-pitched yaps like from a small espresso-addicted dog. I can’t stand that kind of dog or the kind of barks it makes, and I can’t for the life of me imagine why there is always a little boy who thinks that his greatest god-given talent is to bark like one. Again, the school always seems to acquire a new one every year when the previous one moves on. I guess I should draw some lesson about the immutability of life from all of this …

This morning I could have sworn I heard one child screaming “Let me DIE! I just want to DIE!” I don’t know what an 8–year-old could possibly have experienced in the playground to elicit such strong emotions …