another new person here

[Guest guest]

Thank goodness for the NYT article. I read it, and all the comments, and over

and over my reaction was: THIS IS ME !!!! The person who dove down a set of

steps when his mother bit into a carrot was so on target. I've had this since

my mid to late teens. The initial trigger was the chewing of certain family

members. My triggers now are:

- chewing in a quiet room (usually restaurants have enough background noise to

block chewing sounds, for me)

- gum cracking (I can't watch people chew gum, either, especially people whose

mouths rotate in a circular fashion instead of up and down)

- women with sibilant voices (lots of " s's " )

- women with high pitched or babyish voices

- clipping fingernails - there are actually people who do this in offices, and

out on the street!

- mouse clicks - especially on television, when a news show is trying to tell

you where on their website to click, and they make a noise special effect for it

that is 40x louder than it needs to be

- typing on laptops

- loud cellphone conversations; if I'm on the sidewalk near someone who is

having one of these, I'll stand aside and let them get half a block ahead of me

- people walking above me. I've had to move from apartments because of this,

and now I can only live on the top floor.

All the people who have talked about " casing " a room to pinpoint where the awful

noises are going to be - that's me too. On public transportation I'm as far as

possible from the gum chewers. You can't really go to coffee shops or libraries

anymore because of the laptop tap-taps. I would figure out on my morning

commute who all the sibilant women were and sit as far from them as possible.

If there was an annoying person on a train car, I'd switch cars at the next

station. I am probably one of the few people who enjoys it when babies cry on

planes, because it blocks out other noises! And of course, I NEVER leave the

house without a fully charged mp3 player and headphones.

I stopped listening to NPR a long time ago because the voices there are too

annoying. Karl Cassell sounded like he was gargling pebbles in his throat,

other people were sibilant, some had accents that grated on me.

A disembodied voice is always worse than when you can see and hear the person at

the same time. There are certain voiceovers, done by women, that drive me so

batty I had to stop either watching, or listening; some are on TV, some are on

podcasts. The irony is that I know they chose these women because their voices

would be appealing to most of the audience; they are very smooth, clean,

" pleasant " voices (except to me).

I've developed some new triggers since I started working from home:

- skateboards - both in motion, and the noise when they do jumps and it sounds

like 80 lbs. of wooden planks hitting the pavement

- metal ladders being extended, or loaded onto/removed from trucks

(these noises are more annoying when I can't see the source of it. I often have

to go to the window and locate who is making the noise - which makes me feel a

little better, when it's ladders, but no better when it's skateboards)

Noises that help me:

- nature noises - wind, leaves rustling, crickets and cicadas, birds (except

sparrows, who annoy)

- level industrial white noise, like a continuous AC or fan (except idling

trucks, I would like them to turn their engines off)

Animal noises don't bother me, nor do windshield wipers, sniffles, throat

clearing, clinking silverware or plates being stacked. But there's always

tomorrow!

As far as I'm aware, no one else in my family has this. They think I'm very

odd. It's some extremely oddball trait to them. I thought maybe I was just a

big jerk (what kind of person would refuse to eat meals with the people who love

them?). I still feel guilt about that.

Someone else mentioned anemia...I'm anemic. I wonder if anyone else has itchy

skin? I sometimes suffer from terribly itchy skin; in particular, my back will

need to be scratched thoroughly before I go to bed at night, and often the backs

of my legs itch.