Once upon a time there was a little boy, and his name was Owen. He would have been a normal boy like all the others, if it wasn’t for this peculiar and unpleasant characteristic – Owen was always screaming and shouting. But not like the other children. His screaming was so loud that anyone who heard it would have their ears curled into a cone.
Mommy and Daddy were unhappy about it. Owen screamed even when he ate. As soon as he finished a bite, he screamed again. Then he put another spoonful in his mouth, and it was quiet for a while before the screaming started again. Owen screamed even in his sleep. Not as loud as during the day, but it was still annoying. Especially the neighbours didn’t like it at all, they were banging on the walls at night and shouting at mummy and daddy to do something about it, because it’s impossible to sleep here.
It was clear to the parents that they had to cure Owen of his screaming. Not only for the sake of the neighbours, but also because Owen would soon be going to school. And you can imagine what it would be like if Owen was screaming for the whole lesson and did not let the teacher speak.
One day the screamologist called Dr. Shush, came to their home. He was a quiet and unassuming man with glasses and a beard. He looked at Owen carefully, listened to his screams for a while and then just shook his head.
“It’s a severe case of child screaming, but we can handle it. I’d try to patch him up,” Dr. Shush said, handing his parents a pacifier and a cork. “For milder cases of child screaming, a pacifier will do. For the times when the child is supposed to be quiet, we give him a pacifier. If the pacifier is not enough, we give a cork.”
The parents were happy and thanked the doctor for his medicine. They were a little less enthusiastic about the medical bill, but what they wouldn’t do to stop the screaming.
The very next evening, Owen was given a pacifier to suck on. For a while it looked like the treatment was working. Owen rolled the pacifier around in his mouth, occasionally flicking it, but then he took a breath and started screaming, grinding the pacifier in his teeth. Daddy jumped in, ripped the pacifier out of Owen’s mouth and plugged the screaming mouth with a cork. Owen fell silent in surprise, took a breath, and then let out such a scream that the plug flew out of his mouth, bounced off the wall, and flew out the open window. The treatment didn’t work.
The next day the parents called Dr. Shush again and told him how Owen’s treatment had not worked.
“Well, your case seems to be untreatable,” said Dr. Shush. “The only thing you would have to do there is to have his mouth sewn shut.”
But that scared the parents. They thanked Dr. Shush, but they would not let him be treated like that.
So they kept wondering what they could do. He can’t go to school screaming. If he doesn’t go to school, he won’t learn anything and he won’t find any work. And that’s impossible. He’ll have to make a living when he grows up. While his parents were thinking, Owen was screaming happily, perhaps even louder than before.
His parents were interrupted from their thoughts by banging. It was hard to hear over the screaming, but someone was banging hard on the door. Daddy went to the door, opened it, and was petrified with astonishment.
“We got word that your place is on fire. Can’t you hear the siren? You’re supposed to be outside your house by now,” the fire chief yelled.
“I’m sorry, but there’s been some mistake,” Daddy stammered. “That’s not a siren, that’s our boy screaming so loud. You see, he has an incurable form of constant screaming. Dr. Shush said it’s called chronic yelling.”
The fire chief went to check on Owen to make sure it wasn’t really an alarm siren. When he saw for himself, he shook his head.
“That’s terrible. Do you know how many firefighters your boy called in? And for absolutely nothing. You’ll have to pay because it was false alarm,” the chief said.
Dad begged him not to be so angry, that it wasn’t that bad. One call isn’t a big deal. But what about them – the parents? What about Owen? He can’t even go to school, he won’t learn anything and his whole life is ruined.
The fire chief scratched behind his ear and then tapped his forehead.
“I have an idea. Why don’t we take your boy to our firehouse? We’ll train him to be a fireman and he’ll be our siren.”
“But he screams all the time, sometimes even at night,” Daddy warned the fire chief.
But he just waved his hand. “We can handle it.”
And so Owen went to live with the firemen. His parents moved into the apartment next door so they could visit him several times a day and bring him treats. Owen soon became a fireman. And the screaming? The screaming slowly stopped. Firefighters run a lot, jump over hurdles, and practice gymnastics all the time, and it’s not easy to yell while you’re doing all of that. After training, Owen was so tired that he didn’t have the strength to scream and slept very hard. Moreover, he enjoyed it, so he slowly forgot about yelling. And whenever there was a fire somewhere, he would scream so hard that he didn’t feel the need to scream until the next time the fire brigade was called. But just to be safe, they let him yell on the first Wednesday of every month so he wouldn’t accidentally raise the alarm when there was no fire anywhere.
