The Coming Silence

My eldest son is 7 and is a lot of different things, but one thing he especially is, possibly above all else, is noisy. Even amongst his peers (and 7-year-old boys is quite the peer group), he stands out as an order of magnitude or two more noisy. It’s not just talking - he walks noisily, he eats noisily, he plays noisily. If there’s a way of doing something, you better believe he’ll be doing it with the decibels turned up. He didn’t speak for a long time as a small child, but then when he learned to speak, it was like he’d been storing it up. He went from no words to a rich and varied vocabulary in no time at all, and he speaks like there isn’t enough time in the world to get through what he wants to say. I’ve recorded him before, so astounding is the pace and breathlessness with which he speaks. From 500 yards away, we can hear him (and him alone) playing with his friends in the park. I’ve heard one of his friends ask him quietly “Why do you speak so much?” Today, though, breakfast…