Some of the screens I monitor while navigating

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An Open Letter to the Little Girl Who Lives Nearby and Screams Like a Banshee All the Time.

Dear Little Girl,

Hello, my name is Darren and I live near you, and I was once a child too.

Youth is a time of wonder, of precociousness and exploration. I urge you to embrace your childhood as much as you can, Little Girl, as you'll miss it when it is gone. I urge you to make the most of every moment. I also urge you to stop that blood-curdling screaming thing you do whenever something does not go your way. Please.

Little Girl, I am in awe of your lung capacity and your vocal chord's ability to remain tethered to your oesophagus in the face of such a gale of exhalation, and while I do understand that screaming is part of growing up and defining yourself in the world, the screams that issue forth from your throat are the kind that are best saved for occasions that truly deserve them.

Some examples Little Girl, would include the moment of dawning horror when you realise your shirt cuff has been caught in the gears of some hulking machine and your arm is being slowly and inexorably drawn towards the threshing teeth, or you have fallen into steep sided pond filled with crocodiles, and you're sliding down the muddy embankment.

The terrible screaming that you are capable of, Little Girl, is not for the playground. They are not for skinned knees, stolen dolls or name-calling. They are not for hair-pulling.

They scare the shit of of me every time, as they are loud, sudden, panic-inducing and horrible in the way the surgery without anaesthetic would be.

The first time this happened I was back from a flight, and taking an afternoon nap when this horrid gargling wailing scream began. I shot up bolt-upright in bed, looking around panicked without any idea of where I was, but knowing that something nearby was in indescribable pain. I thought it was a cat. I thought it was wet metal twisting. It was of such an amplitude that it seemed to come from everywhere at once.

The screaming was shocking, and my heart was frozen in this terribly long squeeze. As I leapt from my bed and scrabbled for the phone, you kept screaming, and it was then to my horror Little Girl, that I realised that these sounds were not being issued by a hyena birthing a litter of broken bottles, but that a human was being hurt.

A female. Maybe being raped. Or stabbed. Or shit, by the sounds of it more like being raped and stabbed now where the fuck is that phone!

As I got hold of it and was about to call the police, I assume it was your father started yelling at you in what sounded like a Tamil version of “Oh Lord Vishnu, why have I been saddled with a cacophonous harpy for a child whose cries shake the very Earth beneath my feet and split the heavens above. The noise, it kills me!”

As you may recall Little Girl, whatever it was he yelled worked, and as suddenly as your wails began they cut off leaving me standing confused in the darkness of my room, with nought but the light from my phone to illuminate my pale face dotted with cold sweat, the thunderous beating of my heart filling my ears, and the realisation that all I had heard was a child screaming at some minor misdeed committed in the playground.

At that moment all I felt was confusion, relief and amazement at your vocal prowess. It also took an hour or so to calm myself back down from the shock.

Subsequent times have been no less shocking, Little Girl, but now that I know some women is not having her skin flayed from her body in my room but that it is merely a child with a over-sensitive sense of fairness and an overdeveloped ability to scream, can I suggest that we reach an agreement, Little Girl? Can we turn down the intensity of the screaming, perhaps? Just a little bit?

Wailing is fine, as is yelling. But this screaming – it's ageing me prematurely.

Regards,

Darren, The Guy Who Lives Nearby