I had a roommate who loved to scare herself silly at the movies. She would then have nightmares and wake up screaming. I did not know this when she moved in. I honestly thought she was being murdered in her bed and I was next.
I have heard several screams when involved in my racing hobby. Once when a car jumped the spectator fence and landed in a grandstand. The screamer practically ripped his vocal chords over it as we had never seen anything like it in that location before. Luckily, only one spectator had a minor injury. This is not NASCAR racing on an oval track, just to clarify. Something like this happening is extremely rare, giving that racing happens around the world every weekend.
I have a friend who screams at every dang thing. A mouse, an injury, blood, a dropped kitchen knife.
I was with some friends and waiting for a table at a restaurant and we we sat at the bar and had a drink. They gave me one of those square things with flashy lights and it vibrates.
I had never seen them before (90s UK) and so put it in my front trouser pocket. There was a long wait and I kind of forgot about it.
When it went off I felt this strong buzzing and vibrating on the inside of my leg and then screamed jumped up and fell backwards on the floor trying to get it out.
Fortunately my friends and date knew I was a complete idiot, and then so did the rest of the bar.
I was a candy-striper in high school, and I had a shift on maternity. There was once a woman in delivery, who we could hear for over an hour shouting really loud “I can’t, I can’t.”
At some point well into it, the head nurse, who had several children of her own, said “I’ve had it with this,” and marched back into to delivery area, and we all heard her say very loudly “Yes, you can!”
When I first moved to FL, the sight of those befucked flying roaches would elicit a real 1950s horror movie scream. Thirty years later my reaction is more of an internal “eep!” but I can still remember the visceral horror that made me scream bloody murder.
And, of course, the amusement park thrill ride is not complete without full body shrieks.
Frustration - I’ve screamed into a pillow or while alone in the car several times to avoid screaming at my children during a particularly frustrating time.
Being startled - I was sitting at a red stoplight in my car and the guy behind me thought the light turned green (it hadn’t). So he accelerated really fast and hard into the backside of my car, driving me forward into the large pickup truck in front of me. Was not expecting that at all.
I like to do these kinds of screams at the start of a roller coaster (or related) ride. It does relax you. Then, you can feel all the falls and stomach drops better than if you’re nervous and tight.
Once at Magic Mountain a billion years ago two friends and I were going on that ride that drops you almost straight down a very long way (I don’t think it’s there anymore…I tried to google but all I found were more elaborate ones than I’m talking about). One of my friends screamed before we dropped. The other guy and I started laughing and laughed all the way down. It was super fun!
I don’t think I’ve ever screamed. But once I yelped and whimpered really loudly - the airplane I was in hit an air pocket and abruptly dropped. No one else on the plane vocalized at all, and I felt humiliated for being such a wuss. I’m a nervous flier at best, anyway.
OP: Well, I was going to tell about my late mother, who screamed in anger whenever she felt like it. Or screamed in fear. Or screamed when startled. The net result being that when she saw a snake (maybe poisonous, maybe not) and screamed, no one in our house or the neighboring houses took any notice. Yes, she was okay; it didn’t even come near her. But yeah, that was a scream of fright.
And, sorry, still not your OP, but an instance of my not screaming in fright when everyone around me did: Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, when it was new. As soon as Large Marge started telling her story, I recognized it as an old urban legend. “Of course,” I thought. “The driver was her.” But then the thing, you know, the thing that was pure Tim Burton and not part of the old urban legend, happened. And I shrieked with laughter – oh, you got me good! Didn’t see that coming. Then it sank in to me that my friend sitting next to me had screamed, not laughed, and in fact, everyone else in the theater had screamed, not laughed. I was still giggling a bit as I looked around to see everyone else clutching their hearts. And I still laugh at that bit, when I see PWBA.
I’m not seeing the humor or lesson here. So the big tough head nurse was sick of hearing the mother screaming in agony and told her off. And the baby was born soon afterward, no doubt due to the mother in agony having been told off by the annoyed head nurse. How lucky that the head nurse, having had several children of her own, obviously an expert on other people’s agony, knew better than the patient what she was going through. All this tells me is that the nurse experienced a different level of pain than this mother, and that nurse had no business being around a patient in agony.
I had the same takeaway. There is a long history of women being shamed for their childbirth pain. And by shamed I mean at least one woman was burned alive. Pretty much all the natural birth assholes were men who believed childbirth should not be painful and those women who complained of pain were considered inferior mothers seeking attention. I attended a hypnobirthing course recently (sigh) where the book said women with traumatic birth stories are just manifesting it for themselves so they can be the center of attention. That was taught at a reputable hospital in 2020.
I feel for that lady. Because women give birth all the time we become desensitized to their pain. And of course we forget our own pain. I read somewhere that the hormones going on at the time are designed to make you forget. I remember explicitly telling myself to remember how much it hurt so I would never do it again. I don’t remember how much it hurt anymore but I remember what I told myself!
This. My sister started working as a desk secretary in L&D many long years ago. This was a very desirable floor, and at the time assignments were made on seniority, so most of the nurses were this same type of nasty old battleaxes. The mothers were not treated well, and many first time moms were terrified about it. Not conducive to a good experience.
They also used to get a lot of Saudi “princesses.” This was the only time in their lives when they were the center of attention and allowed to show emotions that were usually only hidden behind closed doors. Let 'em scream.
I have wondered about the habit of little girls shrieking and screaming while they are playing. We live across the street from an elementary school and recesses are pretty loud.
I’ve screamed once in my adult life. If you had asked me before that experience if I would ever scream loudly in fear, I would have said definitely not. I would have bet money against it. I’m just not the type.
I was sleeping in my bed alone when a mirror that had been nailed to the back of the bedroom door fell down. I remember the whole thing as two separate events - one, the mirror fell straight down, the bottom of the frame hit the floor, and I sat straight up, eyes wide, and gasped. Then, the mirror fell face down onto the floor, the glass shattered, and I let out a blood-curdling scream, top of my lungs, a few seconds long.
I was in the shower and remembered your story and started laughing so hard that hubs came to see if I was OK. We don’t usually break out in laughter while taking a shower. I just felt that you needed to know this:)