In Defense of Screaming Toddlers
by Bekah Black
“The grocery store is as quiet as grocery stores can be on a Monday afternoon. Cart clatters and scanner beeps drift uninterrupted through the still atmosphere. In this environment, there are several plausible sounds that could wake shoppers from their monotonies, like the clang of someone dropping objects or the exit sensors wailing to catch potential criminals. However, there is a more common, uncalculated wail, one stronger than the sirens, and more mortifying than a shattered mug. This wail is pulsing, committed, reaching everyone from aisles one to seven.”
The alien pressed a button on its clicker. Shaky footage of a grocery store aisle appeared on the screen. The watching audience of aliens murmured. Suddenly, a piercing shriek rang through the auditorium. The shoppers in the video froze. The aliens jumped. The speaker paused the video.
“I must admit,” the speaker continued, “in all my years of exploring extraterrestrial life, in that moment I struggled to understand what human invention could make such a powerful sound. I rounded the corner into the cereal aisle only to discover that it was, indeed, a human invention, just not the kind I’d expected.”
The video resumed, this time in slow-motion. As it spoke, the alien circled various elements of the footage with a laser, which shot from its pointer finger.
“This tiny beast—who, moments before, had been nothing but an angry swirl of snot and limbs on the floor—has now stilled, confronted by its mother’s blotchy face inches from its own. The response to its mother’s words clouds in its face, which bunches together like a stubborn prune, and its screams begin anew, now identifiable as an emphatic no. You can see here—this is crucial, take note—eyes and faces appear from each end of the aisle, staring in silent critique. The mother swoops in as a zookeeper to a violent amonstrothane, captures the flailing creature in her arms, and rushes away as the resounding no echoes and, eventually, fades. Soon enough, the clicking carts and scanner beeps resume and fill the empty, quivering space.”
The screen went black. The audience looked disturbed. The alien speaker took a breath to collect itself.
“In this scenario, it is difficult to stop and consider the primal thoughts of the little thing that causes so much societal disruption and noise. It’s difficult to recall that they have any thoughts. But I have learned that all human people (even little ones) have thoughts, in varying degrees of intelligence and intensity, and none of my fellow researchers would deny that thinking for humans is difficult and, occasionally, unpleasant. Processing the world through thoughts as humans do, even when one has experienced the world and knows its operations, is a difficult task.”
There were murmurs of assent.
“For toddlers in particular—which is what this breed of human creature is called, toddler—thinking is doubly difficult, for a number of reasons. Firstly, they are just experiencing and discovering what thinking is. Secondly, they have had fewer than three human years to learn how the world operates. Thus, toddlers constantly encounter as new and difficult what adults have long considered mundane and easy. In the midst of such confusion, it is natural that they, like adults when presented with a stressful situation, would revert to their old habits and respond as they are used to. These old habits, of course, learned in infancy, are to cry and scream. Toddlers, however, unlike infants, have begun to take hold of words and what they mean, often understanding more than they can communicate themselves. When they are not stressed or overwhelmed, this growing vocabulary suits them quite well, and their pronunciation flubs bring smiles to all those around them with souls.”
The alien researcher paused to take a breath and smiled a little, revealing its three rows of purple gumdrop teeth.
“However, when they are incapacitated by a negative emotion or experience, they regress to the aforementioned explosive auditory habits formed as infants. In addition, their expanding linguistic skills make an appearance usually through employment of the harshest word they know.”
The alien held its webbed, oblong hands out to the audience, who replied in unison with a series of clicks, which in their language meant “no.”
“Precisely. The ‘no’ can quickly devolve into an emotional, sometimes manipulative, tantrum, which is what you just witnessed. The toddler, however, will not know correct behavior unless they are taught. The maturity of a human generation rests on every screaming toddler and their accompanying parent to do their jobs—to learn and to teach—properly. This is a hefty responsibility for both toddler and parent to bear, especially in the necessary evil of a public space, where screams pierce the ears of an audience who look on with equal parts condescension, fear, and gratefulness that they are not the ones responsible for the little terror.
“However, what the often judgmental onlooker doesn’t remember is that they were once that toddler, wailing from the linoleum floor, learning for perhaps the first time how behavior in grocery stores works. I posit that, instead of lurking from the end of the aisle to watch the drama unfold, it would do humanity better to remember that they, too, are learning still. So, dear colleagues. I present a solution.”
The alien pressed the clicker button with pride. A new video filled the screen, showing the same aisle as before. The mother and toddler were there still, but the mother had looked up and away from the camera in bewilderment, and the toddler had started laughing—although the auditorium still rang with screams. The onlookers, who had become toddlers themselves, writhed on the linoleum, their angry, snotty faces crinkled up in rage. The researcher smiled again and bowed as the audience applauded, slapping their antennae heartily above their bulbous heads.
Bekah Black writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her poems can be found in The Pittsburgher, UReCA, Levee Magazine, and others. She's currently writing her second novel (her first was a dystopian she wrote in high school that she swears will never see the light of day). Find her on Instagram at @bekahbwrites.