The Sound of Chewing

The Achilles heel of my mother’s side of the family…it’s kryptonite, the one chink in it’s armor, is nothing else but the sound of chewing. Go and sit next to my aunt and bite into an apple and you will see a very terrifying and alarming transformation. Her eyebrows will suddenly rise, her eyes will widen and they will look as if they are ready to pop out of her eye sockets, her mouth will clench, and all this to such an extent, that you will consider it to be one of the most nerve racking spectacles that you have ever had to witness. It used to be a mystery to me, when people suddenly would stop attending our Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners, and up until a couple years ago I thought that they must have not liked our food or the way we had set it up. It never entered my mind that we could have possibly stopped inviting them over because they had made the mistake of chewing sunflowers seeds while my aunt was 3 feet away.
My mother is a different story, she will simply get up as if insulted and walk away from anyone that accidentally slurps the soup, or will smack their lips as a sign of some kind of satisfaction regarding the food they were served. This apparently will cause an even greater confusion to our guest, when in the middle of a conversation my mother will leave them hanging as if they were a complete stranger.
So, as I grew older, I began to see early signs of this mental instability developing in me as well. For example there will be times when Shoshanna will be chewing on her bubble gum and I will turn to her and say “You have to spit that out now” at which point the gum will literally come flying out of her mouth and into the garbage can that stands next to her. Other times I will be sitting next to Dita, and I will be the one chewing on potato chips, and I will suddenly turn to ask her in a very urgent manner “Can you hear that, can you hear me chewing on the potato chips?” Of course now I try to battle this horrific ailment as best as I can. Lately for example, when I hear someone chewing on a gum, I talk to my self and try to convince my self that everything is alright, that the sound of someone smacking their gum is a good thing, someone is enjoying themselves, so I should be happy for them, that the world is a great place because of bubble gums, and sunflower seeds, and green and red apples and delicious soups, and that it would really be a sad world if it was completely devoid of the sounds that all these delicious things make. This lasts for a minute or two at which point in time I will most probably get up from my seat and distance my self as far as possible from that person and their bubble gum.