Scream? Me?

Have you ever noticed that people are noisy? It seems everywhere you go, someone is making noise. Babies are screaming in the aisles of Walmart. Kids are yelling across the bins at Toys R Us. Teens are shouting across stores to find out what shoe size their friend wears. Adults are talking on their cell phones in a normal voice in public dressing rooms, rest rooms, restaurants, and movie theaters. Society has become a very noise-filled place, and this trait seems to be passed on to the new generations.
So is it incredibly weird that I hate making noise? When I was younger, I couldn't stand vacuuming because it was so loud. I don't yell, and I never scream. Even when riding the Titan, the sound I made was closer to an "oop" than an "ahh!" I seriously have a problem with making noise! And I didn't really realize it until I took a musical theater class in Dallas Summer Musicals Academy.
I wasn't projecting well. So I went home, waited until I was the only one home (which is not easy in a household of eight), and started singing at the top of my lungs. That was pretty fun. Then I decided to practice something I never did. You got it: screaming. I was all alone; no one would hear me. But it was so incredibly difficult! I didn't know how to scream. I wasn't sure what sort of sound to make, what syllables to form. Needless to say, it didn't go very well.
Since then, I've practiced a few more times and gotten better. The test came just last summer though, when I had to play the Wicked Witch of the West in a performance. Naturally, the scene included one of her infamous laughs. I couldn't do it. It just wouldn't come out right. In desperation, I started practicing in the shower at home. I think I freaked my family out a couple of times until they realized what I was doing. At last, I had a pretty good laugh... but it was still in the shower. I was hoping and praying that when I got on stage it would come out as a great, loud "Yeeehaaaaaahahahahaha!" instead of a small "heeheehee." Guess what? Complete success found me. It was very loud.
So is it good to be loud? Well, I must say, noisy people sort of annoy me. I cherish silence most fondly. But if you're going into musical theater, you might want to make sure you can scream. If I ever teach a voice lesson of any sort (hey, we can all dream), especially if it's for musical theater, the first thing I will have my students do is scream at the top of their lungs. Just to make sure they aren't like me.