By Karen Wheeler, Slice of Life

I love the season of open windows. I must admit, however, that hearing the outdoor sounds occasionally takes me back to the summer of ’95, when two window-related things happened that I’ve never forgotten.

The first incident that summer was a real “ear opener” for me. For some reason, you see, when they were young my three children embraced Darwin’s parallel, albeit lesser-known, theory of “survival of the loudest.” If Mom – for some reason -- didn’t hear you first then, by golly, she should hear you the most. To rise to the top of the heap you had better shout the loudest, sing the strongest, or cry the longest. Indeed, my kids firmly believed that all human interaction was best accomplished at the absolute highest end of the decibel scale.

Karen Wheeler

Surprisingly enough, I had been OK with their level of noise until one evening when I walked the dog in the park next to our house. I had strolled across the ball field, past the playground, and slightly behind the small hill when I heard this raucous commotion. “Whew, what a noisy bunch,” I thought as I walked along. “Must be another family with little kids on this side of the park.”

I started back toward our house and the voices grew louder. I thought I recognized my daughter’s shriek of joy, but shook my head. “Nah. Our house is way across the park.” I walked a little more and decided that those were definitely my children, and figured that my husband must have shooed them out to the back yard and the wind was carrying their voices just perfectly across the fields.

As I got closer, I noticed that the backyard was empty but the squeals, shouts and laughter were louder than ever. I recognized enough words to know they were playing Candyland, but wondered why they were playing the game outside. And if they weren’t outside, why were they standing at the window and shouting out through the screen? And if they weren’t shouting out through the screen, why did it sound like they were?

I stopped to talk to the neighbors, and casually mentioned that for some reason my kids were being unusually noisy tonight because the sound was just blasting out through the open windows. They looked at each other and shrugged, “Sounds about the same as always,” they said.

It was my first realization that, locally, we had come to be known as “the Loud Family.”

The second window incident came just weeks later. I had gone off with a friend to listen to the Rev. Billy Graham in St. Paul and my husband -- in typical dad fashion -- had just finished wrestling with all of the kids on our bed. He had stepped into the next room for a moment and the three kids – in typical kid fashion – began leaping and jumping about on the bed with joyful abandon.

It seems that, while jumping, my oldest son – then a wiry, 4-year old – lost his balance and fell against the window screen, which then gave way and toppled down onto the dog kennel below. The other two children began screaming that their brother had fallen out the window, which brought my husband sprinting from the adjacent room to the edge of the bed. He braced himself for what he might see when he looked down onto the cement slab – surrounded by a sharp, metal fence -- below, but then he noticed something.

There, on the outside of the windowsill, were two little hands clinging tightly to a thin strip of plastic along the bottom of the window. My husband reached outside, grabbed onto those wiry little wrists and hoisted our startled son safely back into the bedroom.

I have often wondered if any of the neighbors were looking out their own windows at that very moment. Would they have gasped and prepared to race over to help, or simply sighed and said, “Man, the Loud Family is totally out of control. Now there’s even a kid hanging out the second story window.”

As for me, I’ll never forget the two things windows taught me that summer. One, guardian angels really DO exist (and perhaps are even more attentive if the mother is off listening to the Rev. Billy Graham). Second, windows not only let the outdoors in, they can let the indoors OUT – which might occasionally rattle a few of the folks walking by on the street. 

So, even though I still love an open window, it may come as no surprise that I now occasionally get up and close ours if we’re in the middle of a fast and furious family game. It might not totally help us to shed the “Loud Family” title, but it keeps us on good terms with the neighbors. 

(Karen Wheeler is a veterinarian who lives in Burnsville. Her column is one of several opinion and commentary pieces appearing regularly in this newspaper.)