The Quiet Tinkling

This week, a fascinating article appeared in the New York Times about misophonia, a condition characterized by an irrational response to sounds that don't bother other folks.  When I read the article, I saw myself.

For as long as I can remember, I sounds that other people don't even seem to notice have driven me mad.  Gum chewing and lip smacking, eating and whispering in libraries, chatting outside a room or building -- all of these are enough to make my heart race, my brain obsess over the sound, my mood to darken and rage.

I remember one night when I was a teenager, being awakened by the sounds of my own father and his friends in the driveway, directly below my window.  They were laughing and talking, having just come home from an evening out.  I was so maddened by their laughter and chatter that I opened my window and yelled at them, "Be quiet!"

Oh, and clocks.  I cannot stand case clocks, or alarm clocks, or even modern quartz clocks whose ticking ticking ticking I can hear from another room.

When I took my written comps for my doctorate (three and a half days locked in a small library room with four other candidates, all gum chewers), I had to shove a desk into a far corner facing the wall, plug my ears, and use a hat to screen off my peripheral vision.  Even then I could hear the chewing, the smacking, the popping.  I was trapped in a Poe short story.

For years, I thought I was crazy.  Now it turns out I'm not, or not exactly.  There are others like me, and they have the same stories to tell, their conditions like mine appearing in childhood and worsening into adulthood.  It's a comfort to know that what I have -- whatever its source -- is shared by some minority of other folks, for whom sound can be torture.

And why did I think of this today?  Because I heard another sound all afternoon, a soothing one that helped drown out the trucks and traffic and saw from the yard next door. 

Now if I could only hear this tinkling all day, every day long.