Those Pesky Little Noises You Make

Lately I keep landing in hot water over the sounds I make. Not the grumpy ones. The happy ones. When I'm settled and glad about something, little murmurs of contentment slip out of me, and apparently that is a problem. My spouse hears them and lets me know, with a frown, that he'd rather I didn't. You can get scolded for being cranky, sure, I understand that. But for a few satisfied sighs? I'll even hum while I'm doing something I enjoy. And there I go again, in trouble without lifting a finger to earn it.

Think of the Big Bad Wolf, the one who huffed and puffed until the little pig's house came down. That's the performance I get from my husband the moment I ask him to do anything that calls for a sliver of physical effort. He heaves these enormous sighs, as though I've handed him the heaviest chore ever invented. So his gloomy noises pass inspection while my cheerful ones don't?

I'll admit I let out the occasional unpleasant sound myself, usually when some unexpected, severe pain catches me off guard. According to my husband, though, I'm supposed to swallow those white-hot nerve pains in total silence. Heaven help me if I call on God or Jesus for relief, and worse still if some old cuss word from years back escapes under my breath.

At what point did we decide it was fine to pick at other people simply to make them quit doing something harmless? I keep wondering why the beliefs and habits of someone else, things that cost us nothing, rattle us so. If you hunt deer or you crochet, that doesn't obligate me to do either. Why the constant scramble to defend our right to do or believe whatever we please? And does my right to do or believe a thing really depend on bending everyone around me to match?

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