Making Some Noise

No one in my house besides me needs to get up early in the morning during the summer so I’m usually the only one up before I leave for work. I have to admit I don't enjoy summer mornings as much as I could because everyone else gets to sleep as late as they want but I still have to get up and go to work. It has recently come to my attention that I make a lot of noise in the morning. Both my daughter and my wife told me that I’m really loud in the morning while I’m getting ready for work.

I must say that I was kind of surprised by this because I try hard to be as quiet as I can in the morning. I don’t think I make too much noise in the bathroom in the morning. About the only thing I do that makes any noise is blowing my nose after I take my shower and I do that with the door shut. Due to allergies, about the only time in the day I can breathe normal is right after taking a shower, so I need that. I also brush my teeth and that’s about it. I haven’t used a blow dryer my whole life and don’t really need to these days with the amount of hair I have left. Not much noise here.

I may make a little noise when I go downstairs. I usually put away any pots, pans, utensils and the like that were hand washed and left to dry. I have to admit that putting away the pots and pans does make some noise, I mean they are metal, but even with those I try to be as quiet as possible. I tend to let the refrigerator door close itself  instead of holding onto it and going slow, but how much noise can that make when you’re upstairs in your room with the door closed? I also use a blender every morning for my protein shake (I need to eat something and regular food makes me tired, so I drink one every morning on the way to work) and that can be a little loud for about a minute. Maybe I make more noise than I think.

My mother has told me that she never had to worry where I was as a kid because she always knew exactly where I was because of how much noise I made. So if I was in the house or out in the yard, Mom knew where I was. I can kind of see that looking back now. I was a little heavy on my feet walking around and I was a bit klutzy, tripping over things or banging into things. I used to try to imitate things I heard, too, like birds, music or voices – irritating to everyone but me. I think I was kind of a yapper, always talking about something, even if no one was listening.

Outside, I would have a running play-by-play when I was playing. It may have looked like I was just throwing a ball up in the air or off the house and catching it, or just taking shots on a hockey net by myself, but there was a whole game going on and I was right in the middle of it. Of course, my team always won whatever game was being played. I guess if you can’t be a star in real life, you can still be a star in your own little world. There were times I realized I wasn’t just saying it in my head, I was actually saying it out loud. It makes me wonder what it sounded like to others in the house or just passing by the yard. I know I found it quite entertaining when my own son did the same thing as he ran around the backyard, participating in some imaginary competition when he was little. 

OK, so I probably do make a lot of noise in the morning getting ready for work. I probably make a lot of noise throughout the whole day. As much as I try, I just can’t seem to help making noise. I guess it’s in my DNA. Maybe I should start a support group, Noisemakers Anonymous (“Hello, I’m Joe and I make a lot of noise.”), so me, and others like me, won’t have to feel bad about our noisiness. There are many things much worse than being loud and making noise. My Mom didn’t seem to mind it. At least she always knew what I was doing.

Smooth Operator

Since everyone in the family has an iPod, we bought a connection cord for each car so we can listen to them through the car’s stereo system. As happens with so many things today, one of them is broken and the other one is falling apart but still works. On a recent Saturday I needed to drive my son to a friend’s house and was taking one car but had to get the working iPod connector out of the other car so we could listen to the music we wanted to. As I got back into the car I went to lean my arm on the center console like I always do when I get into the car. However, for some reason my son had opened it, so expecting something solid to lean on and finding nothing, I kind of stumbled into the car leaning over to his seat.

My being a klutz is nothing new to my kids as I do things like that a lot, which usually garners a few laughs, so of course my son laughed at me. He commented on how coordinated I was sometimes and how that particular incident was quite elegant. Actually, what he said was that it was “like a swan”. We both laughed and I mentioned that both he and my daughter got some of that DNA in them, because the both of them do klutzy things all the time, too. I won’t tell you how well my daughter wears her food sometimes or how my son knocks things over or trips on things because I don’t want to embarrass them by going into the details. Suffice it to say that we’ve all had our not so shining moments.

As we drove, I told him how when I was a teenager I could be walking through my living room and trip over nothing. My Mom once asked me how I could play sports and have such good balance but then walk through a room and stumble when there was nothing near me. The only explanation I have is that I had this special super-hero-like talent that only worked playing sports; at other times I was just like everybody else. When I was in school, I never ran up or down stairs because I knew there was a good chance I would fall on my face or my butt right in front of everyone. So I took it slow and played it cool – all while holding onto the railing. Heck, I could do the opening theme to the old Dick Van Dyke Show without trying.

My wife loves to tell the story about an incident that showed how much alike my Dad and I were. Here’s the setup: We were at my parent’s house, sitting in the living room, which was by no means small, and which had a coffee table that Mom kept some plants on up against the wall. Dad left the room for something and on his way back banged his leg on the coffee table. He basically walked right into the table. Of course, we all laughed. You would think that after seeing that happen I would be a little more careful, but a few minutes later I went to the bathroom and on my way back, you guessed it; I banged my leg on the coffee table. I basically walked into the same table that was in the same place in the same room that Dad had just moments before! Like father like son, I guess.

So we get to my son’s friend’s house and he gets out of the car to go up to the house. I always wait until my kids get in the house before I leave because you just never know what may have come up in the time since they spoke to their friend. This particular house is a two-story house and he had to enter on the second floor, which required him going up a set of stairs to the door. I’m sitting in the car watching him and all of a sudden his foot caught the step wrong, he stumbled and went down. If I hadn’t been watching him the whole time, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed, because he was up in a flash. As soon as he was back on his feet, he looked over to check if I had seen what happened. I just pointed at him and laughed as he laughed, too. I then took out my cell phone and texted him a very simple message: “Like a swan”. Like father like son, I guess.

You know, it’s great when your kids say or do something that is intelligent, creative or just plain nice, and people say “Your son is just like you!” or “Your daughter reminds me of you!”. Those are the kinds of things I hope I never forget as I grow older. Walking into a table two minutes after my Dad did the same thing or watching my son trip going up the stairs after telling me how uncoordinated I was, those are things that I know I’ll never forget. Those are the things that make us who we are – real, klutzy and human.