One of my male colleagues has a two year old daughter and I found out that his ringtone is a soundbite of her crying (as an infant).
I said to him, "I don't know how you could voluntarily make that your ringtone."
"Why?" he asked.
The sound of my baby crying is NOT a happy sound to me. I mean, I may as well set my ringtone to sound exactly like my pager. Plus it might make me lactate.
I have a feeling that this guy did not do a lot of late night feedings. Baby crying probably just meant handing her off to his wife.
My mom's ringtone is the sound of my cousin whimpering. She says when she's in a quiet place (meetings, church, a library) and forgets to turn off her ringer, it attracts less attention.
ReplyDeleteI noticed a similar thing when my children were infants. My reaction to one of them crying was, OMG! Must do something!! while to my husband it was just a loud noise. I think we're hardwired to respond to it whereas for men it has to be a learned behavior.
ReplyDeleteThat's just weird....and kinda twisted.
ReplyDeleteConversely, a family friend set his ringtone to that of his daughter when she was 5-ish yelling, "DADDY YOUR PHONE IS RINGING PICK IT UP PICK IT UP"
Mingle, I used to work next to a guy with a ringtone like that. His wife and kids set it up without his knowledge. He never picked up the phone when they called, so they made the ringtone as annoying as possible, hoping he would answer it just to stop the shrieking.
ReplyDeleteThe real reason he never answered the phone was that he left it in his desk and then spent every day in meetings. So he never even knew they changed his ringtone. I got to listen to it nonstop all day long, though.