Lower Your Voice

"And, I can't hear myself think.  I am---"

"Oh, I'm sorry.  Hello?" asked a secretary on the line. 

"Hello."  "No, I'm sorry."  My voice was filled with so much accommodation I hardly recognized it from seconds before. 

She took a moment to look over the calendar, and spoke about the 'crazy weather' we're having. 

My son ran past, I caught him.  Although speaking to the secretary, I looked him in the eye attempting to telecommunicate the behavior I required of him, right now.
"...I know...hehehe...yes, crazy weather.  Those poor flowers."

I released my son.  I'm sure he got my point.  He did not.

"Yeah, I'll take the 10:30, I think that'll work..."

I "speak" to my three year old now; my voice so small he can't hear me whisper, my face is, however, as expressive as a Barnum clown and it makes him giggle.

I growl: "Lower.  Your.  Voice." 
"...hehe, that's great.  Oh, something Friday afternoon?  

My son, who is increasingly boisterous, rolls on the floor beside my feet.  He is happy. I am not. I hold up a 'shhush' finger.  "Oh, no problem."

His voice changes again, can it be further annoying?  Is he toying with me?
I cup the receiver.  "Lower Your Voice." -(to him). "Oh, yes.  Fine." -(to her).  "I do have a moment while you check." 

So contrary. I'm beginning to boil. He is not this child.  "Yes, I'll hold." 

I take the Muzak opportunity to kneel in front of my increasingly obstinate child, "I am asking you to lower your voice!" 

"Mommy. I can!" he smiles.  

"Then do it, more!"  The secretary reopens her side of the line, and my son asks me in a voice I've never heard  from him before, "willlll yyoouu help meeee puuttt myyy ssoccks onnn, so I can ice skate on the hardwood fllooooorrr?"

"Perfect.  Thank you."  The call is over.
I hang up.

Matching his billy goat gruff voice, I call him back from dancing in the kitchen.  "Son!  Come here."  Immediately, he is, with slippy white socks in hand.  "I feel like you are being disrespectful, hon."

"Why, Mommy?

Deep breath.  "Why?  I asked you to lower your voice so many times, and you didn't."
"I did, Mommy!"

"You did?  Well, I'll be glad to hear just how you listened."

"I could make my voice lower and lower, as low as it could go (his voice starts high and bottoms out to monotone), but I cannot talk as low as Daddy can.  He talk really, really, far low, can't he?"

I get it.  All the force I've built up breaks apart like a weak foundation as I bend to tug on tube socks for my child who listened to my every word and did exactly as I asked.  No matter how obscure my request, he made his voice "lower," every time, until he thought only his Father could do better than he had done for me today.