Published on: 08 Apr 17:23

Dorian asks

My grandma just yelled at me for chewing with my mouth open (I wasn't) while eating onion rings, because it was "so loud".

What are some other things I can do to annoy her?

My answer

Misophonia, eh? I feel her pain! I've got it too. Apparently just about half of us have it: a visceral disgust and irritation at mouth-sounds. If someone chews with their mouth open in the same room as me, it's only seconds before I start fantasising about strangling them. However, I love bullshit-jokes more than I hate mouth-sounds, so I'll readily betray my misophonic-brethren and tell you what you can do for maximum grandmatriarchial irritation:

Tell her you've got a horrific and tragic medical condition that literally prevents you from chewing with your mouth closed. It breaks your heart to annoy her so, but you honestly have no choice. It's either that or cease eating altogether and starve to death. She wouldn't want that on her conscience, would she? 'Course not. Get chewing.

You have thus now twanged her conscientious heartstrings like Stalin belting out Bohemian Rhapsody at Live Aid. Whenever you (in her opinion) chew and smack and gobble and munch and she feels the renewed urge to yell at you, you can apply unto her a meaningful LOOK, and with any luck she'll become transfixed by overwhelming sensations of guilt and charity and pity and thus chicken out from her planned abuse. With a bit of practice, you'll soon learn to adjust your ratios of horrible slurpy mouth-sounds to your mournful starveling torso-quivers, and thus also adjust Granny's ratio of impotent misophonic fury to her hot flushes of sympathetic gastro-shame. With enough weeks of slurpy experience you should be able to keep Gran's fury:shame ratio consistently and exactly equal, for weeks and weeks and months and months and eventually she'll have a nervous breakdown. Mission accomplished!