Dec 2, 2021 3 min read

Smoothie nipped me on the hand yesterday.

I was clipping my fingernails when the pup heard the sound and came running and leapt at me with teeth bared. It didn’t break the skin but the speed with which it happened was a little shocking. I got mad at the dog, told him to leave the room and shut the door so I could go back to clipping in peace.

There are two things Smoothie doesn’t like: anything to do with the coffee maker, and a nail clipper. The sound of it must enter his ears like a javelin because he’ll come running from three rooms away to protest with frantic barking and, as happened yesterday, a burst of aggression.

Smoothie must have something called misophonia, a condition in which certain sounds elicit strong emotional responses. People with misophonia can become irritated or enraged when they hear their trigger sounds.

Rage isn’t part of my own bit of misophonia, but irritability can be. For some reason the sound of water pouring from a pitcher into a glass makes me want to punch something. Turns out other people share this propensity, with some individuals particularly sensitive to the sound of hot water being poured.

When I was working in TV news, I was exposed to the water-pouring sound on a somewhat regular basis. Every city council meeting, symposium and indoor news conference included people sitting at a table at which were placed pitchers of water and glasses. I’d be standing in the back with the cameras, and watch as someone reached for the pitcher, and I’d see the noise coming. I’d lower my head and put my fingers in my ears until it was over.

I’m guessing that personal water bottles have replaced the pitchers, and council meetings don’t produce as many pouring sounds any more. But the noise is everywhere else. This time of year brings those holiday commercials featuring icy, noisy cold pours of Coke. Makes me shudder just thinking of that. And the absolute worst are the commercials for the Soda Stream machines that add bubbles to juice. When that comes on, I can’t click away fast enough.

Oddly enough, I’m not bothered by the more common triggers, including mouth noises like chewing, slurping and crunching. The French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre may have had his own misophonia in mind when he famously said, “Hell is other people,” a quote that has since been amended to suggest the problem is not other people in general, but other people at breakfast.

I don’t notice chewing or slurping noises, and I can comfortably have breakfast with members of my family without wanting to flee or even say something unkind.

Of course, the universally offensive sound has always been nails on a chalkboard. I went through 17 years of school, and then later wrote on chalkboards as a teacher, and I don’t recall ever hearing anyone deliberately scraping nails, although a certain kind of very hard and shiny chalk did cause an irksome squeak.

Since the biting incident, Smoothie has been keeping to himself some. He is a tender-hearted boy, and I think I hurt his feelings when I yelled. I’ve since apologized and in time, he’ll come around. Next time I trim my nails, I’ll close the door, to spare him the pain.

Just now, I’m wondering what it’s like when Smoothie has his own nails trimmed by the groomer or the vet. Poor Smoothie. It must be torture.