Nearly every time I randomly ask someone to tell me what assaults their ears most, an example will quickly roll off their tongue. And I end up laughing all over the place.
An older lady once told me that she could not stand the sound of her husband rubbing his sock feet together.
In fact, while he absent-mindedly did this while watching TV, she daydreamed about aggressively closing the recliner on his limbs.
“That shhhht shhht sound of the socks makes me furious,” she snarled. “It doesn’t matter how many times I yell at him about it, he does it anyway. So if I accidentally on purpose broke both of his legs in a recliner mishap, it would be impossible for him to act like a cricket. I could finally have some peace!”
After so many years of marriage, that rather snarky little woman added that seeing her man naked made her vision blurry. And she was also sick of matching the poor guy’s socks, especially when they were constant reminders of his cricket hobby.
That other gender is not excluded from this discussion.
The sound of their wives cackling with girlfriends gets on lots of guys’ nerves. Loathing the mother-in-law’s voice is another popular complaint.
But divorce court immediately comes to many male minds when they hear their darling life partners strip the gears on the riding lawn mower.
All of my life I have been hypersensitive to a lot of weirdo stuff that doesn’t seem to bother anyone else. So these discussions about auditory upsets intrigue me and convince me that I am not a total nut cake.
Long before I was old enough to blame my brat behavior on PMS, I wanted to tackle people for popping their gum. If I heard someone gagging and vomiting, well … move over Rover because it meant that I would be hurling too.
By the time my gigantic bionic ears and I skidded into menopause a few years ago, I could hear anyone in the tri-state area clicking ink pens. If you are seated next to me and you slurp your soup, I cannot guarantee that I won’t ram that spoon up one of your nostrils.
If I cannot escape the sound of someone dragging his teeth across a fork or stirring sugar into iced tea too loudly and for too long, my stomach starts to cramp.
Yeah, I am total psycho.
And I can be a mean, big-eared psycho, at that.
At one particular place of employment, one of my co-workers showed up every single day with a bag of microwave popcorn. She sat two desks away from me and chomped on that popcorn like she had not eaten for several days.
It got on my nerves so much that my left eyelid suddenly would not stop twitching. So one day I sneaked into the break room, unplugged the microwave and taped a little hand-written lie on the microwave door, “Sorry. Broken.”
Karma kicked my butt, though. That chick and her big fat teeth replaced the popcorn with celery sticks.