My well tuned ability to tune out.

[skiny]

I'm sitting here at my desk, working away with the faint city sounds coming up 12 floors and through my open balcony door. These are the sounds we don't hear unless we listen for them. Sounds our minds have filtered out like the ticking of a clock or the low rumble of a car engine on a long trip. But as busy as my mind is, there is something going on that for some reason has decided to no longer ignore. It sounds like a bloody war zone off in the distance. Like mortar fire on the far side of the city. I turn my head and look from my desk out across the city and there's a massive fireworks display over the Casino du Lac Leamy just across the river. My balcony faces the casino across the river and Parliament Hill so I can watch all of these fireworks displays quite easily with my feet on my desk and apparently this one has been going on for a good 30 or 40 minutes. I caught the last 5. At least a half an hour of fireworks that I would have seen if I'd just leaned back and turned my head to the left. It's amazing what a person's brain can tune out if it's busy with something else.

No wonder I was able to stay married for 15 years.

 

[chayton]

Funny, I'm like that too if I'm busy with something. And yet if someone has an annoying habit that makes noise (clicking a pen, tapping something on their teeth etc) it only takes about 2 seconds for it to irritate the hell out of me.

 

[skiny]

I know a guy who blows his nose more often than a normal person but his nose makes the most amazingly loud and annoying sound. I'm not even sure how a nose can make that noise. It sounds more like it should be coming from his ass. Then he checks the tissue. Perhaps looking for signs of methane. He seems like a nice enough guy though so I make an effort not to refer to him as "ass-nose."

I wonder if he blows his nose late at night and frightens the children awake.

 

[just play]

Of course I know I'm going to be the opposite of everyone.

I can't tune out anything, I hear everything!!! It's the most annoying thing ever. Even if I'm engrossed typing something here or an email, I still hear even the slightest noise, nothing gets tuned out.



True story, no lie, I swear...my husband is already laughing cuz I am telling him what I am writing....

I had a terrible headache about 10 years ago, (yes we still talk about this) I was upstairs in bed, asked my husband to get me some Tylenol. He went downstairs into to kitchen and dropped one tablet, I yelled down to him "you better not give me that Tylenol that fell on the floor"!!! He came upstairs laughing and said "no way in hell did you hear me drop that".


No wonder it takes me 30-60 minutes to fall asleep at night.

 

[skiny]

I have pretty amazing hearing when I need to. When I lived in Toronto I used to run a machine roughly the length of a house. These things are borderline ear protection loud and it's actually been suggested that I wear ear protection when I run them but my response is, if you're going to cover my ears you might as well blind fold me too. When you have a good 50 or 60 feet of high speed moving parts, most of which you can't see unless you're standing in front of them, you use your ears as much as you use your eyes.

Once I was standing at the very back of the machine while it was running and my supervisor was standing beside me. He would periodically come around out of boredom and talk about sports or the weather and in mid sentence I stepped around him and hit the stop button. The machine came to a grinding halt and he asked what was wrong. I said "Stripper wire broke." He looked at me like I was from Mars and then followed me all the way up to the front and around the other side and a flat wire about the size of a coat hanger was snapped off.

He said "You heard that break?" I said "Of course not. I'm psychic."

When machines like this are running properly they might sound like they're just making a lot of racket but they have a rhythm almost like music. You might think your mind has tuned it out until someone strikes the wrong cord. Then it gets your attention.

 

[just play]

This is actually an interesting topic. Now I'm thinking about all of our senses and how one persons differs from another.


Back onto hearing, (for now, lol) my hubby is practically deaf, I can't talk normally because he is always saying "what", you can imagine how ANNOYING that is when you hear everything!!! When he walks into the other room, I literally have to yell. I can't sleep in the same bed with him, I can't whisper something to him in public, etc..but on the fun side...*evil laugh* when my 23 year old daughter comes over we can literally talk about him when he is in the same room as us. My 11 year old will start talking to him and I have to say "umm, you know he can't hear you", then we start laughing and he looks at us like huh. It's even funnier when my dad asks him a question and hubby doesn't answer, me and my dad look at each other and roll our eyes and start laughing, then hubby says "what". Thankfully my dad has my same warped sense of humor.

 

[skiny]

My stepfather can't hear out of one ear. If you speak to him from one side he likely won't hear you. And snapping your fingers in front of his face before you speak is considered rude (according to my mother.)

 

[dionysus]

I'm about 5 minutes from Lac Leamy - people on our street were out watching it last night. I was on the deck in my underoos so I didn't go onto the street but I sure could hear them and the sky was well lit

 

[chayton]

Funny JP, your life sounds like mine. I have supersonic hearing too and Ray is like half deaf. One day I was upstairs working and he went down to his studio in the basement and was playing some music. I'm 2 floors above him and the ornaments on my shelves are bouncing to the beat. The phone rings and it's the neighbor complaining that he can't hear his TV. I go down one floor and all the dishes and pots and pans in the kitchen are rattling around, then I get down to the basement where he is and tell him that the neighbor is complaining, and he says, "Really? It's not that loud..."

And yet he can't sleep with a fan going in the room because it MAKES TOO MUCH NOISE!

 

[just play]

Funny JP, your life sounds like mine. I have supersonic hearing too and Ray is like half deaf. One day I was upstairs working and he went down to his studio in the basement and was playing some music. I'm 2 floors above him and the ornaments on my shelves are bouncing to the beat. The phone rings and it's the neighbor complaining that he can't hear his TV. I go down one floor and all the dishes and pots and pans in the kitchen are rattling around, then I get down to the basement where he is and tell him that the neighbor is complaining, and he says, "Really? It's not that loud..."

And yet he can't sleep with a fan going in the room because it MAKES TOO MUCH NOISE!

I hear ya Chayton

What if you both wanna watch a tv show? OMG it has to be SOOOO loud so hubby can hear, and I get annoyed. Especially if it's a tv show where you have to pay attention, he will always ask "what did he say"? I say "put your hearing aid in" I have bought him countless numbers of those "hearing aid" thingys you see on tv and magazines, but they don't work.

My younger daughter and I have fun with it tho, hehe, we are so evil...we woke him up this morning yelling DADDY he jumps up outta a dead sleep and yells...hahahahahahahahaha

Evil we are.

 

[skiny]

I'm about 5 minutes from Lac Leamy - people on our street were out watching it last night. I was on the deck in my underoos so I didn't go onto the street but I sure could hear them and the sky was well lit

There's another one on the 14th, I think. I'm going to see if I can get a picture of it from my balcony. (If I remember.)

Funny JP, your life sounds like mine. I have supersonic hearing too and Ray is like half deaf. One day I was upstairs working and he went down to his studio in the basement and was playing some music. I'm 2 floors above him and the ornaments on my shelves are bouncing to the beat. The phone rings and it's the neighbor complaining that he can't hear his TV. I go down one floor and all the dishes and pots and pans in the kitchen are rattling around, then I get down to the basement where he is and tell him that the neighbor is complaining, and he says, "Really? It's not that loud..."

And yet he can't sleep with a fan going in the room because it MAKES TOO MUCH NOISE!

I hear ya Chayton

What if you both wanna watch a tv show? OMG it has to be SOOOO loud so hubby can hear, and I get annoyed. Especially if it's a tv show where you have to pay attention, he will always ask "what did he say"? I say "put your hearing aid in" I have bought him countless numbers of those "hearing aid" thingys you see on tv and magazines, but they don't work.

My younger daughter and I have fun with it tho, hehe, we are so evil...we woke him up this morning yelling DADDY he jumps up outta a dead sleep and yells...hahahahahahahahaha

Evil we are.

My selective hearing works when I'm asleep too. I remember sleeping in one of those mobile homes once many years ago and there was a massive storm that knocked over trees and flooded the entire camp ground. People's furniture was scattered all over the park. One tree landed on some guy's car. I never heard a thing. I walked out to a nice sunny morning and there were people standing all around surveying the mess and damage and I said to the people standing in the next lot "I thought you said you guys weren't doing anything last night. Nobody invited me."

But if one of the kids whispered "dad" I'd open my eyes.

 

[skiny]

I'm sitting here at my desk, working away with the faint city sounds coming up 12 floors and through my open balcony door. These are the sounds we don't hear unless we listen for them. Sounds our minds have filtered out like the ticking of a clock or the low rumble of a car engine on a long trip. But as busy as my mind is, there is something going on that for some reason has decided to no longer ignore. It sounds like a bloody war zone off in the distance. Like mortar fire on the far side of the city. I turn my head and look from my desk out across the city and there's a massive fireworks display over the Casino du Lac Leamy just across the river. My balcony faces the casino across the river and Parliament Hill so I can watch all of these fireworks displays quite easily with my feet on my desk and apparently this one has been going on for a good 30 or 40 minutes. I caught the last 5. At least a half an hour of fireworks that I would have seen if I'd just leaned back and turned my head to the left. It's amazing what a person's brain can tune out if it's busy with something else.

No wonder I was able to stay married for 15 years.

They're at it again.

It was almost done when I grabbed my camera but I snapped a few shots from my balcony.

 

[Jasminebed]

Went up a few years ago with some comp'ed tickets for this. I really enjoyed it, and you had admission to Gatineau Park which had vendors and booths, as well as grandstands set up.

This is an international fireworks competition, we saw Mexico's entry.

 

[weesie]

I think I read once that it is a female thing. They hearing EVERTHING.

They say that women can't concentrate when there are noisy distractions in the back ground, whereas men can easily tune things out. Heck, I hate it when the background music of a show is too loud. I can't hear the script of the stars over it.

I know I have a hell of a time trying to hear a tv show I am watching when the kids are here and at the other end of the house.

The house has a vaulted ceiling from one end to the other, with the kitchen in the middle. All open, which is nice with the skylights. But, it is hell when you're trying to hear the tv.

Odd fact: Which of your 5 senses are less acute after over eating? (i.e. Thanksgiving/Holiday dinner)


I said smell or taste. Wrong

It was hearing.

It makes no sense to me, but hey, that's what I read.

 

[skiny]

I think I read once that it is a female thing. They hearing EVERTHING.

They say that women can't concentrate when there are noisy distractions in the back ground, whereas men can easily tune things out. Heck, I hate it when the background music of a show is too loud. I can't hear the script of the stars over it.

I know I have a hell of a time trying to hear a tv show I am watching when the kids are here and at the other end of the house.

The house has a vaulted ceiling from one end to the other, with the kitchen in the middle. All open, which is nice with the skylights. But, it is hell when you're trying to hear the tv.

I can tune pretty much anything out.

Except when a woman goes "SIGH."

Odd fact: Which of your 5 senses are less acute after over eating? (i.e. Thanksgiving/Holiday dinner)

My sense of adventure.