No Phony Misery
The year; 1980. The place; a secluded back room in the
middle school library. The participants; me, (a nerdy seventh-grader), a pair of
way-out-of-my-league stuck-up eighth-grade girls, and a vending machine snack.
We’d just returned from lunch and took our seats at the
table in the back room. Seventh grade was the first year for middle school
students to have a schedule that included changing classrooms for each
individual subject. The period following noon hour was my study hall. Nervous
about messing up my schedule and making a fool of myself, I was on-time,
properly seated, and well into Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five when the young
ladies strolled in – tardy and talking. The girls, poorly feigning interest in
their homework, began whispering and giggling. Vonnegut is difficult to
understand, even with complete concentration, let alone for a 13-year-old
staring into the faces of gorgeously-hot, rude chicks.
The study hall girl, bless her bitchy heart, tried her best
to be discrete by painstakingly opening the crinkly, vacuum-sealed plastic
pouch as tormentingly deliberate as possible. In the pristine auditory
environment of the isolated library her repeated fumbling and manipulation of
the stubborn sound grenade in her hands was only slightly less disturbing than
listening to someone attempting to make cellophane oragami while wearing
mittens. For what seemed like the same
amount of time it takes to actually grow corn, she twisted and tore at the resilient
four-ounce bag.
“Use some FUCKING SCISSORS!” I pleaded silently. Eventually she squeezed the bag so hard that
one end popped open, shooting several kernels of the nacho cheese-flavored
dynamite onto the table. After a muffled guffaw from the hungry heathen, and an
animated spit-take from her partner, she tossed a nugget into mouth and bit
down with a ravenous disregard for civility. The ensuing moments tripped a
switch inside me. It wasn’t so much as a
switch she tripped in me – it was a trigger – like on the gun I wanted to fire
into her noisy face.
With white knuckles and a bulging vein in my temple I
survived that afternoon in the library, but my condition has gotten worse. My
wife and her family are wonderful people, they’d do anything for anybody, but
their table manners are atrocious. For 20 years I’ve eaten all my Easter,
Thanksgiving, and Christmas meals in another room. Their fork scraping,
full-mouth talking, and plate-licking often leave me slipping in and out of a
coma. Sometimes even my own chewing sets me off. I have to crank up a Megadeth
CD to get me through the squishy smacking of a braunschweiger and Velveeta
sandwich.
The causes and cures for Misophonia are unknown. The actual
numbers of sufferer is also unknown - as many of us keep this secret to
ourselves. If only the guy clawing his way through a bucket of popcorn in the
movie theater knew that the man sitting directly behind his seat was fighting
an overwhelming desire to choke the shit out him. Or, if the hospital receptionist
was aware that her saliva-infused gum snapping made me seriously consider
running my ear drum through with a crochet hook.
The last several years of teaching school have tested my
ability to cope with my disorder. Relentless pen clicking, foot tapping, pencil
scratching, and sniffling have pushed my limits of neurological endurance.
Recently, a student sat in my classroom and sniffed back a drippy nose for
twenty minutes before I quietly rose from my chair and politely handed him a
box of tissue. He waved me off, inferring he didn’t need any. I re-offered the box and he looked up at me
somewhat annoyed that I didn’t understand him the first time. Briefly I
considered telling him that hearing him suck his snot in reverse hyper-speed
and swallowing it was going to make me puke, but I decided to pull several
pieces from the box, lay them on his desk and walk away.
