One of the most annoying sounds to me is the whine, whether it be a mosquito, the dentist drill or an unhappy child, they are all equally grating to the ear.

Luckily, only one of my daughters was a whiner but she made up for the other three with her constant high note of unhappiness.  The other three girls were quite skilled at an argument but one of them followed every refusal with an annoyingly drawn out aaawwww, it’s not fair.

Any parent who has had a whining child will admit that it is so hard on the nerves to hear the constant drone of the unhappy whine.  A defiant child can be told definitely no and the threat of consequences can end the argument with muttering but they do reluctantly give in. In the case of girls they usually perfect the tactic of flouncing out of the room, a sure sign of being grievously offended.  Just in case you hadn’t noticed the flounce, they also end the performance with a door slam.

However, the miserably drawn out whine of the other child follows you from room to room as the echo of her unhappiness is spread throughout the house.  It is almost as effective as any other form of torture, however, being a hardhearted mother I am able to withstand the onslaught, to a certain point.

When the kids were small, I used to do my grocery shopping on Saturday afternoons, leaving the girls with dad while I accomplished the chore, and enjoyed a few quiet hours to myself.  For Saturday lunch I would prepare something very simple, so I could get finished quickly and go to the shops.

One particular Saturday I had opened a can of alphabet spaghetti which entertained the kids while they ate.  They loved arranging words with the pasta.  For some particular reason, the whiner had received an unfortunate bowl of letters that were difficult to make into words.  After fishing round in the bowl for a minute, she started the familiar wail on the unfairness of her life.

Not feeling in the mood to start taking letters from her sisters bowls, I simply told her to get on with it and never mind.  Obviously the wrong thing to say as the intensity of the whine doubled.

For some reason the noise really got to me and something snapped inside me.  I picked up the offending bowl, turned it upside down on her head and ground the pasta well into her hair.  The whining instantly stopped and the other three girls gasped in amazement at their sister, wearing the bowl and tomato sauce running down her forehead.  The feeling of instant relief and gratification spread through me and I felt a moment of triumph, then it hit me that I was an adult and had acted irrationally.  However, for that one moment, I felt like king of the world.

The feeling soon passed as I had to deal with the clean up of the head of unruly curls.  It came home to me that pasta meant paste and it was truly ground into her hair.  Several shampooings, all accompanied by the loud whining of unfairness really bit into my supposed afternoon of precious time alone.

My children have never forgot the incident and, even forty plus years later, the offender can still remember it by whining about the constant washings it took to get rid of the pasta.

Not one of my most glorious moments of child-rearing, but certainly one that gave me satisfaction and instant relief from the trials of motherhood.

The offending whiner has grown into a super person and a loving mother, she is a daughter to be proud of however, I have to hide a smile when I hear her teenage daughter.  She, like her mom, is a very annoying whiner.  Very gratifying to this grandma’s ear.  God is good!