No Phony Misery

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.

As it turns out whispering and giggling were the least of my worries. One of the girls reached into her purse and plopped a bag of Corn Nuts onto the table. That was the day I discovered I had a problem.

Misophonia is a medical/psychological affliction related to the general discomfort or dislike of certain sounds. “General discomfort” is a kinder and more pleasant description for how I describe my own internal reaction to specific sounds. Hatred, seething anger, and rage are more appropriate definitions for my level of intolerance. Knuckle-popping, gum chewing, slurping, sniffling, and open-mouth breathing by the people around me makes me slip into Stage-One fight or flight mode. But hearing someone eat is my pinnacle of torture.

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.

 Audible human mastication is a repulsive cacophony of crushing, grinding, sucking, licking, swishing, breathing, and swallowing. For most people, sound travels through the ear, over the tympanic membrane, past the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup. It continues through the cochlea, the auditory nerve and up the central auditory pathway until it reaches the auditory cortex. The sound level increases along this entire journey. Once it reaches the auditory cortex it is processed and diffused.  In my case, when the sound is processed it doesn’t diffuse - it makes me want to throw a hammer THROUGH A WINDOW!

My eyes secretly bore a hole through my book and into her discordend soul. “Ka-pow, ka-pow, ka-pow, pow, pow, pow, crunch, crunch, crunch, mince, mince, mince…” Over and over again, the hollow sortie of horrific explosions echoed from within her head and into my nerve center. I casually glanced in her direction hoping to re-read the label on her bag to be certain she wasn’t eating a peanut butter and gravel sandwich, or a pack of firecrackers. To her credit, she wasn’t chewing with her mouth open – I have a buddy who does that. This guy chews like a garbage truck, and so do his kids. Another friend politely likened my buddy’s family’s eating etiquette as caveman-ish. I was thinking it was more like a National Geographic movie of hyenas feasting on carrion in the wilds of the Serengeti. One time, I was trapped in a vehicle with them for nearly an hour as they ate gummy bears, taffy, and beef jerky. It was all I could do to keep myself from grabbing the steering wheel and hurtling us into a bridge abutment.

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.

For now I’ll suffer in silence until some kind of medicine or therapy is developed to ease the anxiety of my daily life. Don’t be surprised if the next time I’m invited to dinner I slip in a pair of ear plugs and ask if we’re having cotton candy. ~L