Hey Yelling People—I’m Standing Right Next to You

10/30/2009

Some people just can't seem to talk without yelling. You know that moment when you switch off the DVD player, and the TV blares at top volume? They're stuck in it.

I had an office across the hall from one of these people once, and I swear I knew more about what was happening in her life than my own.

I'd get the blow-by-blow on troubles with her ex-boyfriend, for example.

"WHAT'S WITH THE NAKED PICTURES OF HIMSELF HE KEEPS E-MAILING ME??" she'd roar into the phone. "I MEAN REALLY, IT'D BE ONE THING IF HE WERE HOT….WAIT, HOLD ON, GOT A WORK CALL HERE."
[Click]

"YOU FINALLY GOT MY REPLACEMENT CHAIR? 'BOUT TIME. I'M ON THE SEVENTH FLOOR. ACROSS FROM THE QUIET GIRL."
[Click]

"BUT EWWW. I MEAN THERE'S ONE PHOTO WHERE HE'S POSING ON A TRACTOR, AND IT'S LIKE WHAT THE HELL?"

I really don't want to know this. But now I've got this picture stuck in my head. Eww is right.
She hangs up. Apparently, the next call is to her plumber.

"HEY!! WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE TOILET SNAKING??"

Oh for crying out loud. Now I'm covering my ears—though, really, defense is useless. Even if both our doors are shut, it's still like she's barking in my ear. And if I put my earphones on, people sneak up behind me and scare the bejesus out of me.

Turns out there's a name for my former co-worker's malady: Voice Immodulation, as portrayed by comedian Will Ferrell in his role as State Department attaché, Jacob Silj, on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. Click here to watch a clip of his SNL Voice Immodulation segment. In it, Ferrell scolds interviewer Tina Fey for her insensitivity when she complains that he's shouting:

"I SUFFER FROM VOICE IMMODULATION TINA. I'M UNABLE TO CONTROL THE PITCH OR VOLUME OF MY VOICE…." he yells. "NUMEROUS PROMINENT AMERICANS SUFFER FROM THIS DEBILITATING DISEASE, TINA, INCLUDING THE GUY WHO PLAYED RAJ ON "WHAT'S HAPPENING" AND TENNIS GREAT PETE SAMPRAS."

I'm not sure about Sampras, but the late Billy Mays, giant of infomercial screaming (OxiClean! Orange Glo!), should definitely be on that list. In fact, all actors in advertisements should be, along with Chris Matthews, Nancy Grace, and kids' show stars Dora the Explorer and all five Backyardigans.

OK, yeah, so Will Ferrell punked us. There is no such thing as Voice Immodulation.

But in all seriousness, I think Ferrell is onto something: There's a whole lot of unnecessary shouting going on. In restaurants, in the workplace, on TV, into cellphones, on the sidewalks and subway trains—and not just by teenage girls.

And what's really triggered my shout-mograph is my four-year-old son T-Rex. I'm pretty sure I'm living with a miniature version of Billy Mays. I love him to bits, but his voice is deafening.

"MOMMY/DADDY I AM THROWING THESE PILLOWS BECAUSE I….BECAUSE THEY'RE IN SPACE AND THEY'RE GOING TO HIT THE EARTH AND BLOW UP. AND. AND I'M GOING TO MAKE A SPACESHIP OUT OF THEM. THEN I WILL CRAWL IN THIS HOLE 'CAUSE I'M A POSSUM. I'M RAJA THE POSSUM. AND I…..I WANT JUICE. MOMMEEE I WANT JUICE. MOMMEEE! MOMMEEE! I WANT JUICE!"

 You can read about what happens to me after several hours of this in my post from last week.

And here's the problem, people: I can't seem to get him to quiet down. No matter how many times I say inside voice, take it down a few notches, settle down, easy tiger, whoa there Tex, and plain old sssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh, he keeps up this earsplitting delivery.

 I tried looking for advice on the Web, but there isn't much out there.

The closest thing I could find—and it isn’t close at all, really—is Pragmatic Language Disorder, in which people say the wrong thing at the wrong time with inappropriate voice modulation and body language. I’m not saying T-Rex isn’t capable of this—he’s a kid, after all, and kids do that sort of thing—but it’s not his issue.

(It’s more characteristic of the socially inept adult who says at an intimate Thanksgiving gathering, “You know there’s gelatin in that pecan pie you made, in the marshmallow. That’s animal hooves you know. I don’t EAT that!”)

No, T-Rex has a basic volume problem. And I’m wondering, was I like this as a kid? Surely I was a quiet, sweet angel. I vaguely remember my parents shushing my sister and me now and again, but it couldn’t have been often, right? I’m sure we listened and immediately dialed it down.

Hey, whatever it takes. I’d just like to nip this in the bud while T-Rex is a kid, so that he doesn’t end up with full-blown Voice Immodulation, so that he doesn’t become an office yeller. Not only do I not want him driving everyone else around him to tears, I don’t want him broadcasting intimate details of his personal life to his office-mates. He’ll have the Internet for that.

Dispatch from Migraine Lane: What Really Causes a Headache?

10/22/2009

"I wanna be, your SLEDGEHAMMER!" my husband is belting out over Peter Gabriel in the kitchen. He's in there doing something useful, like caulking, or—I don't know—gluing the windows shut.

Me?

I'm sprawled on the sofa with a headache, feeling beat-up as the Public Option.

So I shouldn't begrudge him the singing, but…

"Oh let me be your SLEDGEHAMMER. This will be my TES-timony...."

Just what you need after a workday has kicked you in the head. And now, of course, the three-year-olds join in.

T-Rex stands on the arm of the sofa, bellows, "Momeeeee, Yucky-Man's gonna get yooooooo!" He's acting out the "Super Heroes vs. Super Villains" episode of the Backyardigans, which is blasting in the background. I knew we were in for this when he mastered the volume button on the remote.

"T-Rex, INSIDE voice please."

"Red alert. Danger! Red alert. Danger!" he screeches, and launches himself at my head.

"Ouch! T-Rex!"

"SLEDGE!" sings my husband.

"Mommeee, I did a poopoo and a peepee," trills Punk from his potty station in front of the TV. Oh fantastic.
 

I get off the sofa to investigate Punk's output, and wish I'd stayed put. On the biohazard index, this is a level five, Code Red, and at this point, so is my headache. Really, this is a job for the EPA, with all their special equipment and stuff.

"Moommeeee, I can help. Yucky-Man to the rescue!" yells T-Rex. He runs over and slams into the potty, very nearly setting off a toxic explosion.

 "SLEDGE!" from the kitchen.

Well this is fun. What I really want to do is let out a primal scream. But that wouldn't be good role-modeling of the inside-voice thing. Just another night on Migraine Lane.

It's all a hazy blur, but we eventually pack the kids off to bed. I crash on the sofa, arm draped over my forehead, and contemplate my headache.

I've got a chicken-or-egg question: Did my headache already exist—in a low-grade way—and then just get massively accelerated by the kids? Or was I susceptible after a long day at work, and them whomp, the kids brought it on?

As a cyberchondriac, I must, of course, look this up. But not right now. Right now, I. Just. Need. To. Sleep…….

The next morning, the headache is still back there, faintly knocking on the inside of my skull. It's what my parents call a "Lurking"—a hint of headache that should promptly be killed with a handful of Advil. Which I proceed to do.

Unfortunately, the Advil just nudges the Lurking a little further back in my head. It's not going away. So I go online. Time to conquer this thing with information.

To sum it up, there are three major headache types:

Tension—More often isolated than chronic, they cause mild to moderate, dispersed pain. The head feels like it's in a vise.

Cluster—Aptly named, they usually stab, like a hot poker, at one side of the face. The eye is often involved, and attacks tend to recur.

Migraine—Severe and chronic, they often herald their arrival with auras, which are flashes of light, blind spots, or limb tingling. Sufferers are sensitive to noise and light.

As far as I can tell, I don't get any one of these. I get a combination of the first and third. Tension headaches but with the noise and light sensitivity. Migraines but without the auras.

And it turns out that my medication of choice, Advil (a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or NSAID), is recommended for migraines but not tension headaches. In fact, NSAIDs can actually cause tension headaches if overused. ?!

Where the heck does this leave me? I should take Advil but I shouldn't take Advil.
 

Seems to me that my only option here is to stop the headache before it starts. So back to the chicken-or-egg question of cause—click here for a Discovery Health video on the range of triggers.
 

For tension headaches, the origin is largely fatigue, stress and the chemical changes it sets off in the brain. For migraines, the list is longer: stress and fatigue, too, but also hormones (estrogen fluctuations with menstrual cycles, in particular), certain foods or drinks, certain smells or…..(drumroll please) NOISE.

So the answer to the question of headache causation is the chicken and the egg. Stress, hormones, foods—and yes, my boys' noise—can plant the seed of a headache, and they can also make it worse.

But some other key triggers are missing from the list. I'm thinking of petitioning the American Headache Society to add them. These include small boys hurling themselves at your head. Blaring children's programs. Potty incidents that go from bad to worse. Offers of "help" from three-year-olds.

Oh, and the song "Sledgehammer."

Good-Bye to Sex and the City Literacy

09/03/2009

Sometimes, when you least expect it, you’re reminded how out of it you’ve become.

That’s how it was, recently, when I went to lunch with two svelte, single, child-free girlfriends. One of them escorted—more like pulled, I didn’t realize there were stairs—me into a chichi sushi restaurant I’d never heard of, and marched right up to a hostess she appeared to know.

“Don’t YOU look fabulous,” said the hostess, stating the obvious. This girlfriend, who I’ll call GF1, was decked out in a white empire-waist mini-dress with three-inch heels, a matching umbrella, and coiffed, cropped hair.

 

I sidled up, I hoped unnoticed, in my orthopedic Dansko's, khakis, and brown tank smeared with deodorant and milk. The deodorant was a result of my poor aim and chronic inability to remember to apply it after I get dressed.  The milk was from Punk’s morning ritual of testing his bottle’s spray arc.

Once seated, GF1 said she would have the usual, and didn’t bother opening her menu. I, meanwhile, sweated over hundreds of options and babbled about how I’d eat sushi all the time if I could.

Right then, GF2, also spectacularly attired, breezed in. And the conversation proceeded as follows:

GF2:  You know, I’d also eat sushi all the time, except I don’t want to end up like Jeremy Piven.

GF1: Ha ha ha ha ha.

Me:  [Blank]

GF2:  Yeah, we were all set to see Speed-the-Plow on Broadway when he pulled out.

GF1:  Oh please. Like he really got mercury poisoning from sushi. Whatever.

Me: Umm. Who’s Jeremy Piven?

[Pregnant pause]

GF2:  C’mon. You know who Jeremy Piven is.

GF1: [To the rescue] Entourage. From Entourage.

Me: Uh. I don’t watch Entourage.

[Longer pregnant pause]

To help me save face, the girlfriends launched into Piven’s filmography. The Kingdom? Nothing. RocknRolla? Nothing. Grosse Pointe Blanke….from like 1997? Vague flicker of recognition.

OK never mind. The conversation turned to GF1’s recent girls’ trip to South Beach:

GF1: It wasn’t DC, for sure. Our hotel had a topless bar on the roof.

GF2:  Must’ve been lots of plastic at that bar. And not just in the credit cars buying the drinks.

Me:  Blank.

Me:  Is South Beach in Florida or California?

I can’t even describe the looks that comment prompted: a mix of pity and horror.

Look, sorry, but I’m a journalist. I will always ask the stupid question.  Always.  I think people are often amazed at the stupidity of my questions. I’m sure they’re thinking, “For crying out loud. I would never ask that out loud. How embarrassing. I would just go home and Google it.”

 

I just ask the question. I don’t care. I’m not going to sit there and pretend I know something I don’t. If I weren’t a salt-aholic I would ask what that white stuff is.

Still, pre-kids, I was respectably pop-culture savvy—I could quote whole scenes from Sex and the City—so I felt pretty square after that lunch. To test my level of fossilization, I posted a question on Facebook: Am I the only person on the planet who doesn’t know Jeremy Piven got mercury poisoning from ODing on sushi?

Within seconds, I got this response from three different people: “Yep.”

I thanked them for the vote of confidence.

The comments continued, with a co-worker saying I needed to hang out in her office more, and me casually responding that, being a mother of two three-year-olds, I am seriously in need of anti-Teletubbies intel.

Within minutes, there was flurry of responses from parents. Apparently, I am not the only parent suffering brain rot from kids’ programming.

 

The gist of the comments was this: First, no more Teletubbies. Banish them from the house. Do the same with any Barney or Boohbahs. One friend noted that comedian Lewis Black said he went back for a second vasectomy after seeing Boohbahs.

Second, the parents said, get yourself HBO and get yourself some Entourage.

Sheesh. I thought I’d get an outpouring of support—sympathy for being sentenced to watch a barrage of under-five programming and being screamed at to change the channel when feebly attempting to view adult shows. From my three-almost-four-year-olds, the charge is always, “It’s too scareeeeeeeeee!” And it’s hard to argue with that.

But these parents were telling me to take back the television. Trouble is, I have no idea how.
Maybe the parents’ point is that, after the kids go to bed, we should stay up and ram in every possible popular program—Entourage, Mad Men, Weeds, you name it—so we can talk the hip talk as needed.

For me, not gonna happen. The kids exhaust me, so I go to bed right after them. And if I do happen to stay up a bit later, I go for geeky nature and medical shows. Or the Weather Channel. I freakin’ love the Weather Channel.

So, what parents like me need is some sort of pop-culture coach. Or a Web site—a Cliffs Notes on pop culture for parents of small children. I, for one, would be on there all the time, orthopedic shoes propped up on my desk.