When Mabel was not even a year old, she once silenced an entire Ben & Jerry’s ice cream place in Hanover, New Hampshire with a non-stop barrage of “Ba! Ba! Ba!” exclamations which registered decibly somewhere between a foghorn and a Who concert.

The customers were nonplussed. Many laughed. One professor type tried to say something profound about the power of an infant to shut down so many conversations. I remember thinking that guy just wanted to hear himself talk, and that Mabel had done that better.