I live on a canal in south FL and one day was in my apartment and heard BLOOD CURDLING screaming…“HELP!!! HELP MEEEEEE HELP MEEEEEE!” in a register I previously thought only dogs could hear. I nearly broke my goddamned neck running down the stairs to see wtf was what (it was coming from the water) and raced to the canal- only to see 2 girls of about 10 playing on a floating raft in the water. HOLY shit, I was so panicked from it I bitched at them for a solid 5 minutes about it and when their mom came out to see what all the bitching was I bitched at HER about it some more. I was 99.9% sure I was running down to a serious emergency situation and it scared me shaking. I was furious beyond words.
Could not disagree more. If it is after school shenanigans, fine. But I have a couple of Tween girls on my block who were out with friends playing Manhunt at 11pm a month ago. Screaming like idiots. Even my no-longer-Tween 14yo daughter wanted to kill them. I was patient and it ended after an hour. If it happened again, I would’ve had The Talk with her parents.
That explains the sounds my favorite cousins used to make when they were little - I’ve heard a peacock squawk in response to them… (good times…)
Kids can’t go near water without shrieking.
At a museum the other day and there were a million little fuckers running around seemingly uncontrolled. Some guy (not me!) was going off his brain about it being due to living in a society where all kids get ribbons on sports day.
OK, tween is too old,and 11pm is too late. Obviously. That is not at all the type of scenario that I am defending.
After talking about this with another neighbor, it would seem that the parents aren’t hearing it, because they are apparently leaving this little girl home alone while they’re at work. The girl and her family are Mexican (we have a large Mexican population here), and I have noticed over the years that Mexican parents often seem to assume that other people in the community will watch out for their kids. I first noticed this at our town’s big annual festival. While the white parents were all keeping a close watch on their small children and not letting them out of their sight, the Mexican parents allowed their young kids to go where they will. And maybe that’s how it works in small towns in Oaxaca and Michoacan. It doesn’t work here.
Neighbor and I are getting this close to complaining to the landlord about this girl. It’s not just the shrieking. The girl has no sense of “boundaries”. She thinks it’s hilarious to knock on people’s doors and run away. And if you don’t open the door because you know it’s her, she’ll proceed to pound the living fuck out of your door and scream for you to open up. She’s smeared mud all over my stoop and door. She’s left a large rock right on the threshold of my door, almost causing me to trip and go asshole-over-elbows down the steps.
About 7:30 PM, and dark.
Mashing the sweet potato?
Anecdote here - I recall being a child and occasionally being told not to scream and being utterly confused because I was not screaming, as far as I was concerned. Screaming was on tv when someone was scared. I was laughing and playing and not at all thinking of the sounds I was making. As mentioned above, there was no intent to scream. There was another word I didn’t get, too. Whining, maybe? Not sure. But I associated with a particular sound (like a pet might make) and I wasn’t making that sound.
And don’t even get me started on parents who said “don’t do X in the house” and then got on to me for doing X outside.
My landlord’s granddaughter/great granddaughter used to come by on the weekends and she was the most terrific screamer. The fence, the ground, the birds, the dog, the sky, everything had to be shrieked at like she was being gang raped by Alien Xenomorphs. She sounded like she’d seen and memorized every horror movie scream you ever heard and it cut right through the walls and doors and right into the pain center of my brain.
Thank you. My three year knows this, and I think (hope) it’s because we’ve made a point that shrieking means she is hurt or in trouble, and when we hear it, we will come in and SHUT IT DOWN. We feel the positive message is that if she really is hurt or in trouble, she can count on us. The negative message is that if she ISN’T hurt or in trouble, she can also count on us.
We just had Thanksgiving, at which we had girls who were 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8 years old. There was loud talking. There was some screaming. There was giggling and maniacal laughter usually associated with spree killers. There were 10,000 renditions of “Let It Go.” All of this is the reason that wine was invented. However there was no shrieking.