A funny thing...

A few days ago, I briefly passed someone on the street and heard them say, “A funny thing happened the other day…”. What was that funny thing? And crucially, did they mean funny ha ha or funny weird? I’ll never know.

This got me thinking about words, meanings, and how often it is that one word has at least two completely different meanings. It’s what makes language learning so fascinating and sometimes so frustrating too.

I also thought: every week there’s at least one thing that happens to me that is either funny…or funny – so why not start writing a blog about it?

And so here it is: My funny blog.

Ever since I can remember, there are certain sounds I really, really can’t bear - to such a point that I want to cry. Usually I can leave the source of the noise in time, but otherwise the best-case scenario is a racing heartbeat and trouble breathing. All in all, it’s a very funny (weird) thing that I don’t understand at all.

One of the worst for me is very bassy music coming from a car or at a concert. Cars usually pass by fairly quickly, but at venues it’s a different story. It seems that nowadays, sub woofers are used systematically at gig venues, even when they’re not actually needed for that type of music. For example, a few years ago I went to see Calogero and had to leave the hall. Then a couple of years ago, my husband and I went to see Gregory Porter and the same thing happened. These are singers that I love… and yet I couldn’t cope with the sub-base music. When I wrote to the venue to ask why Gregory Porter needed subwoofers, they replied something along the lines of well, this is what venues do nowadays to “enhance the experience”. This really upsets me because it means that I may not be able to go and see a gig ever again. There probably are still concerts without them, but I don’t want to risk having to walk out and being disappointed again.

There are other sounds I can’t bear too – like cars honking repeatedly (often to celebrate a wedding or football win, which is again funny weird because on a less visceral level I’m genuinely happy that other people are happy). It’s the same with clocks ticking (any clock however big or small) saucepan lids rolling from side to side, people whistling, and…whispering. Aaaagh!

Seriously though, every time I get freaked out by a particular noise, I wonder what on earth is wrong with me. Do I have some buried childhood trauma involving bass music and saucepans in a car, with one passenger whistling and the other whispering? I mean, really, what is going on?

Well, a funny thing happened last Sunday -  some friends came over for lunch and we somehow got on to the topic of noises that annoy us. One of our friends immediately said, “There are so many noises that drive me absolutely crazy, they make me so angry!” I’ve never heard anyone else say this before, so my first thought was wow, I’m not the only one after all! Then she said, “Apparently I have misophonia.” Well, that sounded to me like a type of delicious Japanese soup, but obviously it isn’t. She explained that it’s an actual disorder where people have very strong emotional reactions to certain sounds. According to a recent report in The Guardian newspaper, it affects about 18% of the UK population - and there has been a fair amount of serious research on it. So, I have misophonia. Does it make me feel better knowing there’s a label for it? Nope. Do I feel better knowing that other perfectly nice, sane, rational people feel the same way? Yes, absolutely!