It’s officially a condition.  What, you ask?  My desire to reach across the table and commit acts of violence upon whoever is making sounds when they eat. And I’m not even talking about the excessively noisy or unmannerly diner.  I’m talking about ANY eating sounds, including, but not limited to, slurping, chewing, licking, smacking, crunching and breathing. In fact, I swear I can hear saliva glands beginning to churn out mouth juices and it makes me want to run from the room screaming. 

I realize that everyone who reads this is now thinking that I’m a complete and utter lunatic.  My husband is included in this category. But I have had this “issue” my whole life. I can remember suppressing these awful urges to shriek obscenities at my very sweet, elderly grandfather as a child because, when eating soup, he would dip the spoon in his soup, bring it to his mouth and suck up the liquid in a looooong, sloooow, sluuuuuuuuurrrrrpp!

I have spent many meal times telling myself to just ignore it, that normal people aren’t bothered by such subtle sounds and I need to stop being so effing uptight.  But I simply could NOT ignore the sounds and it doesn’t matter if it is my husband and children whom I love and have close relationships with or a perfect stranger to whom I should be compelled to be polite.  When they start the disgusting business of eating I envision tearing out their hair or standing up and screaming “FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY WILL YOU STOP EATING LIKE A MOTHER-FARKING ANIMAL!!!!”  Crazy, I know. 

But today all my self-recrimination came to a screeching halt when I read a newspaper article that mentioned an audiologist named Marsha Johnson who works at the Oregon Tinnitus and Hyperacusis Treatment Centre has diagnosed a condition called Soft Sound Sensitivity Syndrome (also known as 4S)!  The article quoted her as saying that mouth noises “can send these patients through the roof, out the door, and into their rooms and into seclusion” and that “victims may cry, yell, strike out, retreat, scream, withdraw, (and) abuse others…in an effort to remove the negative stimulation”.  I know it’s kind of crazy that knowing this makes me feel better. But it does!  I’ve never gone ballistic and actually freaked out on someone.  (Well, except maybe my husband when he walks up behind me eating something and I scream “Stop EATING in my freaking EAR!!!!!”)  But it’s nice to know there are other people that feel this way, and suffer from it in a more debilitating way.  I mean, it’s not nice that they suffer in a debilitating way. But it’s nice that I no longer have to wonder if I’m just taking the phrase “anal retentive” to a whole new level of psychotic behaviour. 

So next time we’re eating dinner together, if you notice my head spinning around on my neck, try and ignore it.  If you can.  It’s not that I have anything against you and it’s probably not even that you are eating your meal in an impolite manner.   Really.  It’s not you. It’s me.  I’m just a little sensitive (times four).  I’ll try and bring my paper bag to breathe into so that we don’t have an “episode”.