Restful homecoming?

Coming home is culture shock. I've spent the last four years growing more and more used to the calm and quiet of college life (I'm serious) and less and less accustomed to waking at 6:30 a.m. to arguments over whose Nerf gun is whose and who had it first and who started it. I love my family dearly, but after a day of dodging little brothers who hurtle themselves like small air-to-surface missiles through the kitchen, cringing at the constant shrieks of my five-year-old brother with autism, and absorbing the mixture of the TV movie, the CD from the kitchen, the CD from the upstairs bedroom, three brothers wrestling in the living room...I'm tempted to sprint for my car, pull my hair out, and scream bloody murder all the way back to my quiet apartment.

And I'm glad to have my noisy siblings--all seven of them. How could I not when my sixteen-year-old sister told my mom that she loves the conversations we have, when my little brothers count the days until I come home on break, when my second youngest brother asked if my graduation from college meant that I would "come to live at home again."

So, I scream quietly inside, roll my eyes at my mom, go sit in my room to bring the noise down to a dull roar, and laugh at them--my crazy, nuts family. God help those who come mentally unprepared. :)