Auditory Ills

Posted on February 8, 2008
Filed Under Anxiety, another dread disease, kids | 16 Comments

Goteeman turned me on to an exam of sorts today and my test scores did not surprise me. The results are in and the kind folks over at BlogThings have said:

You Are Totally Anal Retentive

Yup, you’re so uptight – people definitely have called you “anal.”
You’re the type of person who’s so OCD you organize your M&Ms before eating them.
You have so many rules and rituals, it’s hard for you to let loose and enjoy life.
So go ahead and mix up your alphabetized CD collection. Live a little!

Are You Anal Retentive?

(Go ahead, click on over, take your test and then come back. I can wait.)

So I am totally, hopelessly, stiflingly anal retentive. This is not shocking or new information but it underscores a certain low-level of anxiety I’ve been feeling lately while eating with others. It seems that I have become increasingly intolerant of the sounds people make when chewing – the smack and burble of someone speaking with their mouth full, dribbles of food falling out onto the table or the floor, the snorting whistle from the nose made when those who tend to be mouth breathers are forced to use their nasal passages because there is a big hunk of steak blocking their airway of choice. It’s all I can do not to cover my ears or hurry from the room to cower in a quiet, dark space and wait for the meal to be over.

This eating aversion can make dinner with my children excruciating. O likes to shovel food towards his face, bringing his mouth to plate level, hunched and hungry, he consumes food much like Cookie Monster, a sort of frenzied crumb fest ensues. G is a dabbler. She never seems to fully approve of the meal set in front of her so she compensates for her displeasure by swirling and stirring and poking at the food on her plate in a sort of dinner dissection ritual. It’s an active dance of avoidance which often ends with her eating choice items with her fingers and spilling her milk. I like to eat my dinner standing up at the kitchen sink, so at the very least, I am five feet away from the very audible experience of dinner with others.

It’s always been there, this irritation. I can remember being adolescently-annoyed by the way my father ate his dinner. The family dining room filled with the sounds of his mastication and I was ill with intolerance. My head threatened to explode. But I was sixteen, I was supposed to harbor a nuclear hatred for everything parental, even chewing habits. But sixteen no longer, now more so than ever, if I’m tired or sick or even slightly off my game, this kind of thing can threaten to unhinge me.

And it makes me nervous because I hail from a long line of Obsessive Compulsives. The most dysfunctional among us is my very own brother and we share half our DNA. On good days, medicated days, he brushes his teeth repeatedly and checks to see that the stove is off and counts the calories he has consumed in a day and then promptly goes out to run for the exact amount of time it will take to burn off every calorie that has passed his lips.

On bad days, things are dicier. He suffers harm obsessions that center around driving and the possibility that the little bump in the road was in fact the thud of a human body bouncing off the front fender. He has been known to circle the car inspecting the exterior for signs of collision with human flesh -for days and days and days. And then, weeks into the obsession, he will begin searching the woods by the side road for the body of the person he is now certain he has killed while driving. Newspapers are collected and carefully culled for reports of hit and run accidents. When none of these efforts turn up a body, he quietly drives himself to the local police station and turns himself in. It’s a cycle that the law enforcement folks have grown used to and they patiently explain that they are quite sure of his innocence and turn him away which is, in some ways, crueler than locking him up just long enough to let his brain reset.

So I’m afraid that this chewing obsession may blossom into something less banal, more unusual and debilitating. There’s a fine line between anal retentive and obsessive compulsive and I’m losing sight of the distinction. I will gladly accept anal retentive as my diagnosis. I’ll receive and own it and hope that the other, more distressing mental disorder, remains at bay for just a little bit longer.

How’d your test trun out? Do tell.

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