For a long time I have been very uncomfortable with loud noises/music...when it is in combination with other activities. Even though I listen to mostly classical music, if I were at a gathering where classical music were being played loudly, I would find it very difficult to communicate with anyone. And it's more than just the fact that I can't hear other people speak. I don't find the noise painful to my ears, I just can't think.
However, I can listen to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, or Metallica for that matter, at very loud levels in my car and feel just fine. It's darn relaxing...kind of raises the hairs on my arms.
It's not limited to music, either. If I'm watching TV and someone starts to speak to me or anyone else in the room, I have to mute the TV because I will not catch or retain anything that person says. I'm sure Lisa finds it odd, but I actually enjoy watching a muted TV. Once or twice I muted the TV during a commercial and walked out of the room, only to have the family yell at me to bring the remote back because they couldn't hear the program once it resumed. [blush] Ever notice how commercials are louder than the show you're watching? Someone explained to me once that it had something to do with the different tones and how they're recorded and that the actual volume is the same and blah, blah, blah, but it translates to LOUDER in my ears.
Oh and when one of my kids yells loudly in a quiet car? Yikes. I nearly go through the roof. Picture a cat with raised neck hair, coiled to strike....that's what I look like.
All of this does not translate to being uncomfortable shooting my guns. Why? Perhaps it is because I am wearing ear protection and can't hear any of the other ambient noises?
I wonder if I inherited this from my mother? One time someone had a tape recorder in our kitchen and they hit record secretly just to get some of the conversation going on. In the background, as we were laughing and talking, you could hear my mother going about her business and several times uttering, "Shhhhhhh" very softly. Each time the conversation reached a certain decibel level, another "Shhhhhh." That could have also just been a product of living in a house with 11 people.
Methinks I have some weird disorder or some sensory issues. Who knows? How about yourself? Do you have X-Ray eyes or one of your senses that seems out of whack?
Me, Myself and I
- Mateo
- I am a Mormon...married to Lisa. We have 5 awesome children. I am a gun rights advocate and believe the 'right to keep and bear arms' refers to an INDIVIDUAL right, as affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. I like to hunt big game, although I have only ever killed a single buck deer. I am an actor of sorts and have been in many local plays and musicals.
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2 comments:
It puts my senses on overload when I am talking on the phone and someone else is talking in the room. There is no stinking way I can have two conversations going on around me and tune one of them out to concentrate on the other one. Both conversations swirl in loud and clear and I understand none of it!!!
My husband swears I have a bionic sense of smell because I'm always asking 'What IS that?!' with my nose wrinkled. I think the heightened sense of smell just stuck around after my pregnancies or something.
My son really does have heightened senses because of his Sensory Processing Dysfunction. We noticed early on that he could see things that we couldn't, like tiny airplanes up in the sky, or a little picture of something he liked across Toys R Us. He'd completely freak out if we went out to eat and the waiters started clapping and singing for someone's birthday in the restaurant, even another part of the restaurant. It's not necessarily that all loud noises bother him, mostly just the ones that they're out of his control. He had no problem with loud noises as long as HE'S the one making them!
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