Yell, Scream, Be Heard!!

All families are immensely different. Most families can either be classified as reserved, or in-your-face and loud. Family essentially shapes who you are. They are ultimately the greatest influence in a young person's life. Most people can be classified as loud or reserved. Yes some people fall somewhere between those two classifications, but most people fall under one category of another. This is primarily due to the influence their parents had on them as they grew and matured. My family definitely can be described as loud, obnoxious, and somewhat overbearing. And I have had to come to grips with the fact that my family, being as loud and unruly as they are, have been my primary influence. If most people end up like their parents, then I will probably turn out to be an even more loud, outspoken adult then I already am as a teenager.

Everyone in my family is as loud as can be, within my immediate family as well as my extended family. It has been a means of survival. The people in my family are uninhibited and unembarassed when it comes to noise and volume. You would never be heard in my family if you were quiet. Quickly you come to understand that you must talk over people, as rude as it seems, in order to simply be heard. My dad comes from a family of 8 children, all of whom are now grown and loud and have loud children, some of the children (my cousins) being borderline obnoxious. If you get angry in my family, we hardly ever deal with it rationally, we just tend to yell until someone walks away. Whoever yells the loudest wins the arguement, as twisted and incorrect as that may seem. It's just our means of existence. In my family, you learn at a very young age that if you do not speak loudly, you won't be heard. And for a child's vloice to be heard, you basically have to shout. This is partly due to the fact that everyone has something to say and truly believes what they have to say is more important than what the next person has to say. They never would admit that, but that's essentially what it comes down to.

I can remember feeling embarassed, and sometimes still do, about my family's loudness. I remember people staring at us, or atleast thinking they were. I can remember friends of mine when i was young telling me how loud my family was. You're not embarassed until you are old enough to recegnize that not every family is like yours. In my case, NOBODY I had met was remotely like my family. Thus started my lifelong (so far) embarassment of my family. My dad has this habit of singing very loudly in public. To this day I HATE when he does that. It really irritates the hell out of me. People stare, and I am so embarrassed. And when I ask him to stop, I am always greeted with a wonderfully shameful, "this is who I am, stop trying to make me something I'm not. I'm sorry your father is soo embarassing that you're ashamed of him!" Sense the sarcasm? And then there are other times when I am proud to be in a large, loud family. This is usually when I am with all of my dad's brothers and sisters and their families. There is strength in numbers. When you're part of a large loud group of people, it's not half as embarassing as just being with my immediate family of 4. I actually love being in public with all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I love laughing loudly with them and hearing their stories.

I can also remember being very young and going to some of my first overnight stays at my friend's houses. Some of their families were quiet, polite, and hardly ever told jokes. This was somewhat confusing for me. At this point in my life, all I knew was loud, obnoxious, and funny. It made me wonder: Was my family was normal? I wasn't old enough yet to grasp the concept that no families are normal. Even further, I now believe there is no such thing as a normal family, never has been and never will be. But now I believe my family is one of the least normal. I can remember going over to certain individual's houses repeatedly and thinking, "this is a nice escape! It is peaceful, quiet, you don't have to yell to be heard, I kind of like it here!" There were other times that going to these type of households made me so uncomfortable that I wanted to leave and go back to the circus (aka the Mulvihill house). I can remember thinking, "do these people have fun?" I felt like I couldn't be myself, which was one thing I always felt like I could be in my own home.

Where did this loud state of mind come from? I have asked this of myself many times. It didn't take me long to pick up on the fact that my dad was loud because of coming from a loud family of 10 people in one house. He had no other choice if he had any hope of being heard. My mom is one of the loudest on her side of the family, immediate and extended. But I often still wonder: Does the fact that we are Irish have anything to do with it? Irish people are notoriously loud and somewhat obnoxious. Could that have anything to do with it? Maybe this is generational, passed down from the very beginning.

Whatever the reason for it being true, it is true, and always will. My family will always be loud. I often find myself being obnoxious and loud for no apparent or evident reason. I guess when you get right down to it, people really do, in one way or another, strongly take after their parents. It is something I never thought would happen; something I never thought I would have to come to grips with. But here I am, doing just that. I find myself becoming more loud and outspoken as I grow older and continue to grow more into myself. If college is like everyone says and is the time in your life when you figure out who you really are, then I assume that I will become even more outspoken and loud then I already am. Ultimately, I know that the belief that you must yell to be heard and understood is a wrong belief. People should be able to speak in a normal, clear tone and be heard. But the belief makes me think of family, which is something that is anything but wrong.