Now that I have a new baby, I'm learning all kinds of things.
I'm also understanding things that I've never understood before. Stuff about how parenthood changes you.
One thing I now understand that I never understood before is Selective Parent Deafness.
Selective Parent Deafness, or SPD, is the ability of a parent to stop hearing the screams and wails of their own child. The wails and screams of other children can still be heard, but their own children are effectively mute.
Before becoming a parent, I was dumbfounded at parents who would let their children have meltdowns in public and subject the rest of us to the concomitant high-decibel caterwauling.
Now I get it. Now I understand that the parents know their child is screaming, but they don't perceive the screaming to be all that bad. They perceive it to be at a much lower level than it actually is.
Armed with this realization, I have decided to do my part to keep public places free of screaming children. I have decided that I will react to any extended crying in public (i.e., more than 30 seconds) as if a klaxon horn was going off right in my ear.
This decision came before I realized that my wife has a much worse case of SPD than I do. Last week, we went to our chiropractor's office and brought the baby with us. All of the doctor's patients are over 18 and, as such, his office is definitely one of those places where screaming children do not belong. Typically, my daughter began having a meltdown as soon as the car was parked. I wasn't about to bring her inside, so I told my wife "Go in, do what you gotta do, then come out, and I'll go in. That way she only cries outside."
I was very proud of my resolve...up until the moment my wife looked at me like this was the dumbest idea she had ever heard of.
"Why do you want to stay outside?" she asked.
"Because the baby is crying like it's been stabbed in the leg by a jagged piece of glass. Nobody wants to hear this." I replied.
"It's not that bad." she said, trying to take the baby.
"NO! Go inside. I'll be here waiting when you get out."
"I don't understand what's wrong. Why do you want to stay out here?"
"JUST GO!"
After shooting me one last glance to let me know she's nominating me for the Moron of the Year Award, she went inside. She was gone for 10 minutes or so. The baby did not shut up the entire time. And she wanted me to subject all of the doctor's patients to that! I realized then that my wife has become one of the insensitive bastards that I used to bitch about.
Then, when my wife got out and it was my turn to go inside, she took the screaming baby from me and followed me in. At that point, I gave up. There was no sense arguing. She was determined that the entire waiting room was going to hear the fortissimo movement from the Baby Concerto.
I'm going to keep fighting this as much as I can but, like any good husband, I can already smell the losing battle. I may be doomed to insensitive bastardhood.