It is with a serious sense of discomfort that I am writing this today as the sound of my pudgy little fingers, tapping away on this keyboard, is giving me the overbearing urge to hurl this keyboard through the nearest window. Although I couldn’t possibly do that as the sound of breaking glass would drive me further to distraction, which in turn would mean a phone call to a local Glazier to repair the damage who would turn up and whistle in the manner that all workmen do when they set about their work. They don’t appear to be whistling to any tune that I’ve ever heard of. It’s a series of notes, delivered in a high pitched warble, that gives me serious thoughts on how satisfying it would be to tape their mouth shut. So you see, what a hard business this blogging is turning out to be for me.
My irrational fear of certain noises does apparently have an official name. This name is Misophonia, and literally translates as ‘somebody who has a hatred of certain sounds or noises’
The technical name is not actually ‘Weirdo’ or ‘Dick-head’ as my wife would lead me to believe. So the next time I mention that the sound of her eating toast is reminiscent of a Beaver gnawing the bark from a tree, she can actually now refer to me as ‘Misophonia suffering dick-head’. A moral victory for all involved, I think you’ll agree.
Upon first reading of the list of the most common noises that are supposed to send me in to a blind rage, I quickly dismissed half of them, and confidently reassured myself that I didn’t suffer that bad with this condition.
“Who would have a problem with people laughing?” I asked myself. I then remembered that I used to work with somebody who laughed liked an asthmatic Popeye. I found it so hair curlingly annoying that I often had to sit there and suppress my feelings of anger and annoyance, because if I didn’t I was sure that various items of stationary would’ve been hurled in an attempt to fill their flapping oral cavity.
“Ok” I said, “so some laughter I find annoying, but who doesn’t?”
I browsed through the list again and my eyes hovered above the words ‘Clipping Nails’. I did remember being really angry about a middle-aged woman clipping her nails once, but she was on a packed tube train and it was her toenails and one did narrowly missed imbedding itself in my forehead as it whizzed across the carriage. In hindsight I think a lot of people didn’t enjoy that particular experience, so I don’t think the feelings of rage were exclusive to me.
So in all honesty, there was only the ‘nail clipping’ sound that doesn’t really annoy me on that entire list. It was time to confess. I had it bad.
I had even experienced some of the noises combined. A family member, slurping at their food, while simultaneously breathing heavier than a sex pest on the telephone is enough to have me reaching for the table condiments, in order for me to ram them into my ears. Anybody who can eat soup and make it sound like a cluster of hedgehogs, spinning around inside a washing machine is either very talented or in need of their own, personal dining table at the end of the garden, In another country.
This is the trouble with Misophonia. Once my ears have identified a sound that will definitely cause me discomfort, my brain will focus on that sound and nothing else. I can be watching a television programme quite happily when I’ll suddenly hear my neighbour’s son, bouncing a football in their garden. The repetitiveness of that sound will bore into my brain and render the rest of that programme pointless. The distant rumble of a car stereo’s bass will make me distracted and fidgety. I cant read a book unless I’m sitting in complete silence, as any sound will make it impossible to concentrate and the words on the page will blur into one. My Labrador Ollie is currently licking himself while sat next to me, and while it is a perfectly natural thing for him to do I often find myself telling him off for doing it, as the sound of lapping dog tongue on withered hairy scrotum is unbearable to my sensitive ears (his scrotum is withered due to castration and not to over licking on his part).
As a way of combating my anger to all these sounds I will resort to mimicry. This will explain why the owner of the asthmatic Popeye laugh disliked me so much. I would replicate their laughter un-consciously as a way of making myself feel better, yet in turn making them feel worse. Aren’t I the catch? I even replicate the sound of my dog licking himself. I only replicate the sound and not the action I hasten to add. Not that the dog will take offense. He’s the only one that will love me all the better for it.
So I am sentenced to a life of disturbed dinners and disturbed sleep, a life with half watched television programmes and unread books, a life spent dodging toenail missiles and mimicking people with the faults that I have unkindly given them. I shall now retire to my darkened, soundless and joyless room. So I will ask you kindly to stop breathing so loudly as you read this. Do your eyes have to flick so noisily from side to side when you read this? What are you, AN ANIMAL????
Miserable Musing. 