The Scream. (Insert piercing before scream)

It's Labor Day and I have had the pleasure of having friends from Kansas City staying with us all weekend.  Brenda is the mom to Little J who is from the same orphanage as Little Princess is from.  She is also a single mom so we have had fun getting to know each other and being able to share/commiserate raising children.  And not just any children. Asian children. You may think that I exaggerate when I say they are different, but they are.  One of their best and worst traits is they are survivors who had to fight to stay alive as infants. This translates into strong personalities and yes, the ever-scary hyphenated word: strong-willed.

Little J and Little Princess are quite the match.  My Little Princess apparently loves to touch others, especially those who are her same size.  Little J, not so fond of the touch.  Since children don't naturally come into this world wanting to share, it made for quite the weekend when one would take what the other had.  My Little Princess also loved Brenda and wanted to sit with her and with Grams (Brenda's mom) which would cause instant panic for Little J.  All of this behavior, typical as it is, would lead to this scream.  Not a normal scream. A high pitched, shrill, ear-piercing scream and the funny thing is, we couldn't tell which two year old it came from because it sounded the same!  Suddenly, my admiration for Kelly and Janelle, two friends who have/are raising twins became HUGE.

The question this raised for me, however, is who the heck came up with the scream?  When you google it, you get nothing.  When you yahoo it, you get definitions.  Why this piercing noise that starts at the toes and exits the mouth with a decibel level so high the neighborhood dogs all start barking?  Why is it done when kids are happy, sad or scared, which in turn, makes it highly unpredictable?  Why couldn't it have been a little grunt instead?  Or better yet, a nice little middle C sounding hum?  Why a scream?

Little Princess is a master of it.  Big Princess has been a great teacher as she has one of the worst I've ever heard.  Combine them and I seriously need therapy.  The Scream has been performed in church, typically at the most silent of times and the poor people in front of me jumped a mile in their seats, before they turned to look at me wondering why I don't beat my children more.  The Scream has initiated our dining experiences, most recently at a Chinese restaurant where most of the patrons were senior citizens.  Add the age to the hearing aids and you had many who glared quite quickly in my direction after the scream, which by the way was because she was excited for the wonton soup.  One lady almost fell off her chair after that scream.  I felt terrible, but Little Princess simply smiled and said, "Noodles."  (She LOVES Chinese food!)

Anyway, this weekend was a rampant version of Screams Alive with concert after concert.  I don't quite know what to do about it if anything, but I still question why cave men/women, didn't simply hum a middle C sound instead of SCREAM.