When I was growing up, there was a family that couldn’t talk to each other. They only yelled. On the bus, at school, even in their house — the kids yelled. The decibel rate in that house was stupendous, and I wondered how they had gotten used to yelling at each other without noticing it.

It’s not as if they were angry, or yelling in a fit of rage. They just yelled instead of talking. One day, perhaps, someone started talking loudly and it wasn’t long, in a household of so many kids, that they had to yell to be heard above the din they were creating.

This neighborhood in which I am temporarily living is a yelling neighborhood. The family in a nearby house yells instead of talks to each other. I have heard the mother yelling for her kids to come, be quiet, sit down, put the ball away, open the door — everything imaginable — the point being, of course, is that I heard it. I shouldn’t have, but I did.

Yesterday I listened to five minutes of “wait up for me!” yelled by a little boy whose friend or brother walked on ahead. Each time brought more desperation to his voice, and more volume. It made me want to stick my head out of the window and yell for the older boy to wait up and for the younger boy to shut up.

Yelling begets yelling.

There’s no need for all the yelling.