Hooliganism

Recently, a representative of State Farm insurance knocked on my door. He wanted to see if State Farm could give us a better deal on car and home insurance than we have with our current insurance company. I gave him the information he requested and he left. A few days later, I received a call from a State Farm agent. She wanted a little more detail about our insurance. I agreed to speak to her because I am always looking to save money. She proceeded to ask me questions about what type of cars I own, who our insurance provider is, how much we pay for insurance, etc.

During this process, my rambunctious little hooligans were doing laps around our tiny house and baby Third was kicking around on the floor. The older two were creating a thunderous din over which I could barely hear the woman on the phone. I have been on the other end of similar phone calls and I know that the background noise was probably deafening to the point where she struggled to hear my answers to her questions.

I chose to ignore the chaos so I could end the call as quickly as possible, figuring it would be easier than trying to discipline JayJay and Max while talking to the insurance agent at the same time.

But I looked up and there was Max standing on top of Third. He was holding onto the rocking recliner so it probably wasn't his full body weight on my poor little baby's chest and tummy, but he was literally standing on his baby brother.

I snapped.

"HEY, GET OFF THE BABY!!!!" I bellowed without even taking the phone away from my face to dull the roar.

Max hopped off and continued to gallop around the house after JayJay. Third seemed unperturbed and wasn't even crying. The pandemonium continued with barely a pause. I remembered I was in the middle of a phone call. Oops!

"Sorry," I said to the caller, wincing. I had probably just ruptured her eardrum.

She was laughing. She laughed and laughed.

It turns out she had six kids of her own and her youngest was a senior in high school. So she knew. She knew.