I don't want to but you really should hear this....

Click here and press play, preferably whilst reading the following. Probably also turn your speakers down because it may just melt your brain. What you're hearing is a 3500 Hz square wave audio file. It is the frequency that is the most senstitive to the human ear . It is also around this range where the sound of a human infant crying lies.

Evolution is a bitch but at least it's natural.

Trying to ignore this sound whilst being stuck in a car for three and a half hours with it playing in stereo is worse because of just how unnatural it is.

So here I am, Mrs Mango beside me, three kids in the back and an unending carpark of traffic in front of us. We had what should have been a forty-five minute drive ahead of us, and we hadn't moved in fifteen minutes. It would be almost another hour and a half before it did move.
It was at this fifteen minute stage that Little Miss Mango started crying. Around five minutes later, Little Mango 3 joined in, a little harmony going between the two. Imagine - it's like if you asked Kylie Minogue to sing a note that sounds really nice to her, and then doubling it but a little bit louder. There was fruit in the back of our car - I'm pretty sure this sound spoiled most of it. I think if I was ever kidnapped and tortured, I would ask them to pull out my fingernails slowly rather then play that sound. I understand why people on airplanes complain so much - I still have no sympathy for those people but I get it - it was a sound designed to get our attention.
But it's so much worse when that sound has a negative emotional effect that's ten times more painful than the physical. Your trapped, they're crying, you can't do anything about it. Every instinctual part of you is compelling you to act, but your brain is forcing you to sit and wait. It's absolute torture.

So my wife and I are slowly going insane in the front, I'm muttering something about wishing I had some sort of car plough to get through with (NOTE: Road Rage is bad, but a little light-hearted, irrational muttering to yourself is okay), Little Mango 1 is being as patient as can be looking after the other two in the back (I think he is immune to the sound, or so incredibly caring he can't hear it) and the cars are doing a dance with each other; first one side steps forward, then the other side catches up.
Minutes go by like hours, the cars start to look like they're moving backwards as I start thinking: this is it, this is where it will all end - my brain is going to pack it in and find somewhere else to go and I'll be left a jabbering mess. Mrs Mango will need to tell me things over and over, and remind of when to go places, and do things, and what my kids names are when I forgot, and tell me where I left my friggen keys because I'm never looking when I put them down and forget. Which is completely different to now.
Anyway I'm leaving my body now (I think Mrs Mango might be trying to as well because she's holding her head and concentrating really hard), but as we're on the Bruce Highway the only thing nearby is complete darkness, the shoulderless highway which I think is made up of sawdust and potholes, lined on either side by large pits of death. So there's nowhere else to go.

So I'm back in my body, driving nowhere and resisting the urge to plunge a screwdriver in my ear to ease the pain slightly. Instead I try to turn the music up to drown out the sound, which results in two screaming kids and blaringly loud music so not really that much better. See, here's another little fact about that frequency. 3500 Hz, being the most sensitive, means that it is the sound we can hear easiest at the lowest level, so even if you have other noise the same level or louder than that sound, you will never be able to drown it out (unless of course you keep going until you can't hear anything). I turn the music back down and just deal with it, ignore the sound, ignore the emotion, and just try to figure a way out of an unescapable problem.

See, the main problem is even though Little Miss Mango is screaming for no reason at all, Little Mango 3 is screaming for a very good reason. He his hungry, the only reason he really ever screams. So you now have to factor in that he is hungry, upset and there's nothing you can do about it. We consider pulling over but there is either the dodgy side of the Bruce Highway or the pit of death next to it, so I put that off as a last resort. I give it five minutes to start moving, and then another five, and then maybe another five. The traffic starts moving. Eventually, another five minutes later and for no particular reason or explanation at all (which for some reason makes me want to punch my local Federal member - don't ask me why), we are all travelling 100 again and searching for the nearest exit.

Except that isn't easy either. Apparently there are no exits from here on. Oh wait, there's one - no, that just takes me to a massive set of roadworks, nowhere to pull over, and another ten minutes to get back out of. I cross over the highway and head the other way and find nothing still - I should have stayed on the highway another two minutes. Eventually I find a new housing estate and drive into there - we can surely pull over on the side of a suburban road, right?
Nope.
The brightly lit, long streets tunnelling through an estate that hasn't been built yet have no shoulders and no exit, just roundabouts and more straight, empty, brightly lit road. I am counting the blessings that this undeveloped estate is so well lit instead of say the Bruce Highway, because it would be hard to see the giant piles of dirt and unfinished turnoffs, or the security guard sitting outisde his car, picking his teeth and literally guarding nothing, that we pass. Finally I find an unfinished road I can drive into and stop at it. I race out of the car, grab Little Miss Mango; my wife races out, grabs Little Mango 3. She starts feeding him, I change nappies and get Little Miss Mango in her pyjamas, giving her the hug she has been seeking for three hours. A learner driver keeps circling the block, his parent obviously taking full advantage of the well-lit, perfectly empty roads to give a few pointers, with crazy looks to our car on the way round.

It's at this point I think about how this does look - we have one parent on one side feeding the baby, another parent on the other side dressing one of the kids in pyjamas. In the back, our son sits trying to sleep propped up against the car seats sitting either side of him. Our wagon is full right at the back with bags of clothes and toys and food (which we had bought before making the trip). We're parked on an empty road in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. If anyone takes a look at us, we're obviously homeless. At that point, I didn't really care - I would happily sleep there at this point, give up on this trip home and try again in the morning. After an hour of sitting there, when Little Mango 3 is fed and feeling better, and Little Miss Mango is happy to get back in her car seat, we drive off, watching out for the learner driver who's coming around the roundabout for the sixteenth time that night, and continue down the road.

A hundred metres down that road, it ends completely. So not only is an unneccessarily bright and well-guarded empty road, but it's one that actually leads nowhere. I turn around and drive home, back into comfort, back into reality, our heads all a bit blurry and hysterical from the now funny events of the night, laughing at each other and trying to forget what had just happened.

Except somehow I don't think we will every really forget it - it was such an unsignificant night, but one that perfectly describes what being in a family is. It can be irrational, enraging, frustrating, unescapable, and yet so loving, crazy and incredible that you forget all those other things when they've gone.