It seems like just yesterday that I celebrated my daughter’s 18th birthday. Probably because it was yesterday. It also seems like she was just born. I remember her being born 18 years ago too. She was annoying the heck out of my wife, pushing on her bladder for 3 or 4 weeks at the time, and it seemed like every 5 minutes my wife had to pee.

I was looking forward to abandoning all my co-workers for a new housemate that I’d never met. We even scheduled the day, July 24th, as the day she would be eviction day. She didn’t seem to want to budge, so we had to leave the eviction notice on my wife’s belly that she had 5 days to leave.

It was a Sunday night and neither one of us were sleeping very well, because she was laying on my wife’s bladder, and I’m on the couch because I prefer “Rain gently falling on the roof” sound over the “I can’t breathe so I’m snoring” sound from my wife.

My routine back then was gaming until midnight and then wake up at 5 am to get ready for work. Since I knew baby was coming at the end of the week, I knew it was important that I get good rest so I can get everything done before the baby comes NEXT week.

So I’m on the couch, trying to get a little bit of rest, when my wife emerges from the bedroom. I figure it’s just another pee run, since she goes every 20 minutes at this point. This time she wakes me up.

“I think…my water broke.”

“Um, that’s not supposed to happen. She’s supposed to come on the 24th. We scheduled it.”

“Yeah, I know, but sometimes these things don’t go as planned.”

“Okay. What time is it?” I said groggily.

“It’s 3 am.”

“Okay, well I’m going to be awake in a few hours for work. Let’s just wait until then. Or you know, the 24th when she’s scheduled.”

So she went back and decided to pay some bills. Because the bills would be due before we got back from the hospital. She also packed her bag, because you know, she was going to pack on the 23rd, but little Miss Impatient thought she would come 5 days early.

I waited for my 5 am alarm to wake me up, and I told her to call the hospital. The hospital confirmed that she should have left at 3 am when the water broke. I quickly got my bag packed and called work. I told them I might not be there today. Even though I told them I would need to take the 24th and beyond off.

We got to the hospital at 6 am. We had my daughter at noon. My wife never really dilated very much, and her family had a history of Caeser salad-sections, so after thinking about it for 30 minutes, we decided to put her under the knife. They gave her a shot in her spine, put up a sheet, and said I could watch the other half. Probably a mistake. I saw my wife’s insides on her stomach. I saw an alien creature being pulled out of her stomach, bloody, and attached to my wife. They didn’t ask if I wanted to cut it, probably because I was distracted from the alien coming out of her.

The alien was shrieking and crying and being really loud. I guess some people really don’t like being evicted from the houses very much. I still remember the screaming. For 10 years, that’s all I remember. Either her, or her brother who came 3 and 1/2 years later, were always crying, screaming, or yelling at me to do something for them. Like make yourself a sandwich for “crying out loud”. Get it, crying out loud?

If that wasn’t bad enough, I go to work all the time and these co-worker’s aren’t babies, but they act like them. They are always crying and whining if I mess up something or lose a million dollars in a day or something. Like headache inducing stuff.

I know noise cancelling headsets have been around for a long time, but whoever invented it, needs the Nobel Prize. Isn’t that for peace and stuff?

There has never been a better way to avoid people, even when they are all around us, than the noise cancelling. I love noise cancelling so much, but I don’t think it has gone far enough. I think it’s just a start.

There are so many more applications we can use noise cancelling in. How about meetings? Are you being asked to present your job to the group? You wouldn’t have to, if you had the old noise cancellers in. How about learning in school? If only I could unlearn everything I learned in school, I would be in much better shape now. Are you having an argument about who is supposed to do the dishes tonight? Noise cancel your way out of that crap. If you didn’t hear it, it never happened.

My life raising those hellians would have been so much better if only I wore the old noise cancellers at night. If a baby cries in a forest and no one hears it, did it really cry? I don’t know, but I would have found out.

It definitely would have helped when we first moved into our house and the fire alarm kept going off. I would have died in that fire that burned it down, but it would have been so much more peaceful and blissful. And who knows, maybe the sounds of the rainfall would have put the fire out. These things are miracle workers after all.

Can you imagine how great all my family reunions would have been? Amazing. People would have asked me how my family was, what I do for a living and who are you related to? and I could have enjoyed their company and the looks on their faces as their cupped hands motioned upwards and I could have just shrugged that I have no idea what they are talking about and no I’m not going to remove my headphones. I have a condition or something.

I want to thank Mr. or Mrs. Noise Cancellation, who it was named after, for inventing these things. I only wish they would have invented them before I had kids. Then, I never would have known what they sounded like, but I sure would have enjoyed their company a lot more.

A toast to Mr. and Mrs. Noise Cancellation. We salute your bitterness.

ARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH

Bitter Noise Cancellation Ben