SHIT. Some kid in my neighborhood is having one of them total meltdown,
“MMMMMMMMMMOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY,”
screaming tantrums, where breathing is choked and sobbing racks in loud bursts.

It was so bad I threw on some clothes to go outside, because I thought maybe some poor, little bugger was wondering the streets scared out of his friggin’ mind. (While I suck at the old maternal nurturing gig, at least I ain’t no depraved molester type looking to snag a free-roaming tyke, so better me to the rescue.)

But, I got on my front porch and realized that the cries were coming from behind the doors and walls from across the street.

It was exactly the kind of tantrum on a summer’s day that would have had Pat in rare shrieking form her ownself, running from window to window slamming them shut so the neighbor’s wouldn’t hear. “Stop it! Stop it! People can hear you! Do you want them to hear?”

Nothing like an oppressively hot house, now hermetically sealed, and Pat out of her mind angry screaming at you to calm down to really smooth over the tantrum. If the neighbors heard anything, they never did call 9-1-1 even with the apparenly homicidal-sounding rages my mother feared would get us noticed.

Come to think of it, I don’t remember hearing screaming like I just heard from other households growing up. (No doubt Pat would say that was because no other children were as bad as us.) But, honestly, today’s crying sounded like an out of control two to four-year-old not a crime in progress.

I wonder if it’s city living with the houses that much closer and the streets that much narrower. Or maybe the suburban reserve that had my mother slamming down windows in August was pervasive in that time and place.