"Huh?" I despise that word any more. I must hear it in my house 500 times on any given day. It doesn't matter what I say, no one ever hears me the first time. Ever.
Everyone in my house must just be deaf because I'm not even that soft-spoken of a person. In work, I'm pretty sure I'm the loudest one. Everyone must know every intimate detail of my life from my personal calls that I try to take discretely. I don't even know I'm loud until after I've hung up. It's only once the stark silence resumes that I realize that my inappropriate chatter of who is an asshole and why this one isn't talking to that one was dominating the airspace.
I blame my tendencies toward loudness on my father's side of the family. I think being Italian, it's just in your blood to be loud but additionally, the last few generations have been raised in the shadow of an Iron Works factory. It's the same story for my husband's family - Italian with the Iron Works across the street. They all probably had to be loud just to be heard. I can relate. My husband's normal speaking volume is much like that of someone trying to speak near a jack hammer. Most people on both sides of the family shout their every day conversation without realizing they are even being loud. I don't even mind that part. Not at all. In fact, I sort of embrace it as a way of life and our "culture" if you will.
In contrast to my loud side, I also I have another quiet and shy side. My very sweet and often soft-spoken Mom is the one that raised me after all. She was raised in a much more mild-mannered environment than say, my children are. When I was a child, I was always in conflict with myself. At times I was extremely shy and others I was a raging lunatic. I can't begin to recall how many times my mom tried to get me to calm down and be quiet. When she lost her patience she would throw in the "you are acting just like your father!" (who she despised by the way). That quiet side tends to peek through at such times as speaking in meetings in work, or perhaps in company I don't know while totally sober and apparently any time I say anything to anyone in my house.
My kids, having it running on both sides, have inherited the "loud gene" so they themselves are pretty far from soft-spoken. They really have no choice but to be loud in my house though. It's like a survival mechanism. If they weren't already genetically predisposed to being loud, they would have to adapt to ever be heard. Because of every one's loud speaking voices, everything else has to be loud to compete. The living room TV is always blasting while 2 or 3 other TVs are going in other rooms. The radio is always on, the dishwasher is loud, the dog barks at everything and the phone seems like it's always ringing.
All this makes it difficult to be heard. Obviously. However, even in the times that things are not so loud, no one can ever hear me specifically. I think the tone of my voice is just inaudible to them or something. I can hear the kids in the den talking to each other as they play. I can hear my husband grumbling about the game downstairs. If I hear everyone, why can't they hear me? They are the same distance from me as I am from them! I can shout as loud as I can and I get nothing. It drives me insane.
In the few instances that they do happen to hear me, they still never catch what I've said. 10 times out of 10, if I even get a response it is always "huh?". No matter how clear or loud I say it, it's always met with the same dopey "huh?". By that time I've already taken a sip of my drink, put in a piece of gum or taken a bite of my dinner so I can't even repeat if I want to. Though I've recently learned to just not even answer. My lack of response seems to trigger some sort of memory recall mechanism where they actually stop and think for a second and sometimes they can figure out what I've said. But most of the time after the "huh" they just stare blankly at me waiting for a response that they probably still won't hear. In my husband's case, he just gets irritated with me that I've rolled my eyes. He can't dispute it though, no one EVER hears what I say. It's just a fact.
My answer for this problem? Hearing aides. For as frequently as I say it, it never gets any less irritating to my husband. It's my "I give up" line - "This year for Christmas, you're all getting hearing aides!" THAT they always seem to hear loud and clear though!
No comments:
Post a Comment