huh?

I've always had trouble making out what people are saying in noisy places. I've taken hearing tests over the years, and according to them my hearing is fine, and yet, I can be with a group of people in a restaurant, and they're all having a conversation and seem to be hearing each other just fine, and I have no idea what anyone is saying, except, if I'm lucky, the person right next to me.

I finally got around to googling the problem, and found a discussion of it that proves I am not alone. From reading what people say it seems I may have Central Auditory Processing Disorder. This makes sense; my theory was, since my hearing is fine that the problem must be the way my brain was dealing with the information.

It looks like there are some treatments for CAPD, all of which seem to involve listening to something or other many many times for weeks or months. Unfortunately these seem to be treatments for children; I haven't come across anything on treatment for adults. Some people just learn to lip read, which is something I've considered. It's just a matter of forcing myself to work on it.

This is the second problem I have that almost no one else has, the other being my difficulty remembering faces. It just seems that there's something off with my brain. Unfortunately, both of these issues make socializing more difficult, which may be why I was always a bit of a loner: perhaps biology is destiny.

Bye bye, piece of my past!

What I have learned from watching the TV series Hoarders is that I'm a bit of a hoarder. So I'm trying to get rid of stuff I have no good reason to keep, like my "button vest," a jeans vest covered with buttons that I wore when I was young enough to think something like this was a good idea. I'm so fond of this vest that before I toss it out, I wanted to take a picture and write down what all the buttons are.

Two batman logo buttons. A "Let the rabbit eat Trix" button. A "flower power" button. A carved wooden button that says "Love" (one of my favorites). A guitar shaped button that says "U2". A picture of Leadbelly. A psychedelic "WHO" button (I'm not even particularly a fan of the band, actually). "Why Be Normal" (one of my all-time favorite expressions). Three buttons by my friend, the artist Ron English. Some little star with a "1" on it that I think is from my boyscout uniform, or maybe cubscouts). A lady's broach, gold, with a face and a fake jewel in the forehead. "Viva Nicaragua Libre". "No Nukes in N.Y.C." A butterfly stickpin. "Shirley Chilsholm for President." "Get Out of Viet Nam." A button for the movie "Slacker." "Fuck the New World Order." A plastic box with a little plastic Pegasus flying across a painted backdrop (another favorite of mine). And a few others that aren't that interesting and are just there because I put every button I found on there.

The vest is tossed, but I still have the buttons. I feel I should see if anyone wants them before I toss them out. Perhaps I'll put an ad on craigslist: "button collection to good home."