In a house like mine, there are many, many talkers—especially during the summer. I estimate that before the clock strikes 7 a.m., I’ve already heard an average of five trillion words, which typically run in one ear and out the other.
My boys have quite distinctive personalities when it comes to talk. We have Motor Mouth.
This is the kid who never stops talking. He will plant himself right next to your elbow and follow you around as you’re doing the dirty dishes and putting the clean ones away. You’ll have to reach over his head (if he’s not taller than you yet) to get a cup out for his brother, reach around him to throw something away, and reach under him to tie the shoe of his brother so you can get on the road to school, a walk that will contain a billion more words from Motor Mouth while he finishes what he was saying—which he never actually does.
I will regularly trip over this kid as he follows me around talking about his dreams, his plans for today’s stop motion movies, plus the next week’s stop motion movies, and, also, the stop motion movies he’ll make when he’s all the way grown.
He, unlike me, never misses a beat.
We also have The Sloth Speaker.
This is the kid who takes incredibly long to tell a story. He has so many words and stories inside his head that he will often forget what he’s saying in the middle of saying it and either start something new or just look blankly at the wall for a while until he says, “I forgot what I was saying.” He will also interject “um” quite often and will unabashedly prove that he didn’t really consider what he wanted to say before he opened his mouth.
A sentence like, “We did jump ropes in P.E. today” will take him at least five minutes to get out—not only because he will use all kinds of extraneous words but also because of all the excruciating pauses where he has to gather what he wants to say. There are just too many words flitting about in this boy’s brain.
Then there’s The Broken Record.
You can probably imagine that there are many interruptions in our house. The Broken Record is the kid who will start over completely when he’s interrupted—even if he was almost finished with his original story. We live in fear that someone will interrupt him when he’s 12,000 words in and he’ll start over from scratch.
Next we have Mr. Know-It-All.
This honor belongs to one of my 4-year-olds, because of course he’s been around long enough to know everything about the world, and then some. He will speak matter-of-factly on every subject imaginable, even if it’s to say something like this: “One of these days I’ll be older than you.” That’s not possible, son. But I can’t tell him this. He knows everything, and no one can convince him otherwise, even if they’ve been around longer and have done more research on whatever he’s claiming to know about.
Then there’s the delightful Random Man.
Random Man is the other 4-year-old in my house. He offers all sorts of random information in random places. If one were to say that it’s time to clean up, he would say that did you know his brother went over to Logan’s house yesterday? If you tell him we’re going to read a story, he will tell you that he’s not wearing any underwear today. If you tell him thank you for the flower he just gave you, he will tell you that he threw up last night (it was actually three weeks ago, concerned kindergarten teacher.)
His teacher is going to have so much fun next year with Random Man in her class.
The last boy in my house is affectionally called The Sage.
This is the kid who often seems random but is, instead, profound. Sometimes what he says is so profound that we can’t even understand him. It could be because he’s only 2, but I like to think it’s because he has a lot of wise words to say. Everyone gets quiet when he speaks, too—they all know he has something significant to say.
The other day I was cooking dinner, and Motor Mouth came up to tell me about the stop motion video he’d recorded. Sloth Speaker tapped me on the shoulder, and, while Motor Mouth was still in the middle of his never-ending story, said, “I…uh…I…I uh…I was…uh…running around outside and I…uh…fell down and I uh….scraped…I uh….scraped…” He looked lost for a minute and then said, “I scraped my elbow” and held up a bleeding elbow.
“Oh my gosh,” I said. “Let’s get that taken care of.”
I tripped over Motor Mouth on my way to the bathroom, where Broken Record came in and said, “I saw…I saw the…I saw the whole…I saw the whole thing…I saw the whole thing and…I saw the whole thing and it…I saw the whole thing and it looked…I saw the whole thing and it looked like it hurt.”
Know-It-All came in and said, “He’s going to bleed to death. That’s too much blood.” Sloth Speaker started freaking out, so I took matters into my own hands.
“You’re 4,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m wearing three pairs of underwear and four socks on each foot,” said Random Man.
“You’re wearing twenty socks?” said Know-It-All.
“Spider!” said The Sage. He pointed. The room stilled and then exploded. We did what we always do when we see spiders—we ran away screaming.
Well, most of us ran away screaming—all except for Motor Mouth, who ran away still talking.
