I come from a family of yellers. We wouldn't yell at one another; we would yell to one another. Specifically, from one end of the house to the other. These were the days before texting, when you couldn't just message someone to find out where they were. No, back in the day, if you wanted to find someone, you needed a good hearty holler across the house to locate the missing person. This was especially true in my family. It may have been genetic because my grandparents were yellers, and their parents before them. Apparently, there was a lot of yelling back in the old country. Or maybe my family was just hard of hearing and didn't know it. Or it could have just been the fact that we were from New York... not the most genteel state in the union.

So, on any given day, my mother would yell:

"HARVEY, WHERE ARE YOU?"

From across the house he'd yell, "I'M IN THE BATHROOM!"

Then she'd yell back, "OH. DON'T FORGET TO PUT THE TOILET SEAT DOWN!"

Obviously, at this point, everyone in the house, in the neighborhood and in the state knew my father was in the bathroom and usually left the toilet seat up.

Naturally, because of the way I grew up, I thought everybody yelled like this. So, one day after my husband and I first got married, we were in the house, and I yelled:

"JOEL, WHERE ARE YOU?"

But there was no reply. So, I yelled again:

"JOEL, WHERE ARE YOU?"

No reply.

I was concerned, so I went to look for him and discovered that the bathroom door was closed.

I knocked and asked him if he was in there.

"Yes," came the muffled reply.

"Is everything all right?" I said, because that was another thing my family would do if someone was in the bathroom longer than five minutes. I have no idea why we did this. What was likely to happen in the bathroom that would be an emergency and possibly necessitate a call to 911? "Hello, operator, I need an ambulance. My husband is constipated." It defied explanation, yet every time my dad went to the bathroom and lingered, my mother would yell:

"HARVEY, IS EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT IN THERE?"

And every time, my dad would yell back:

"YES!"

And she'd respond,

"OK. DON'T FORGET TO PUT THE TOILET SEAT DOWN!"

When my husband finally came out of the bathroom, he looked very annoyed.

"What's the matter?" I asked him.

"I don't like it when you yell across the house for me, and I especially don't like it when I'm in the bathroom and you ask if everything is all right."

I frowned. But I'm flexible. I could change. I nodded.

"OK," I said. "I won't yell for you anymore. But don't forget to put the toilet seat down."

Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com. To find out more about Tracy Beckerman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: fietzfotos at Pixabay