I myself, have never been a sleeper. From when I was a child. Guess it's something about my nervous system. The slightest thing will wake me up.
If I'm taking a nap, I always tell Alan, don't you dare come into the bedroom and turn off the tv, I'll wake up". What does he do? Because he can't stand anything being on if I'm asleep (now how silly is this??), he'll try and tiptoe into the room and close the tv. Each and every time, I turn over and say "thank you very much, you just woke me up"

I have (this is my term for it), over sensitive hearing. I do have some kind of high pitch hearing loss. I found that out years ago, when I went for a hearing test. I guess it comes from years of listening to my cassette player at full volume and all those concerts at the Fillmore East when I was 22 years old. I saw Santana, John Simon, Tom Jones perform. I saw everybody. I jumped up on chairs. But all that loud stuff affected some part of my hearing.

So while I do measure at having some degree of hearing loss, I also have this ability to hear stuff that no one else will hear. I can hear the people upstairs play music and I go to Alan: "doesn't that drive you crazy, and he goes "what???" oh that little music?? that drives you crazy?"

I can hear the old people downstairs when they play the italian music. I hear absoutely everything. If the people next door are fighting, or the people who live upstairs from the people next door, I can hear them turn on the music so they can fight and they think no one can hear them. I once heard bodies being thrown across the room. And this is another building over from my house.

I once went outside and asked their neighbor who lives on the other side of them (not near me), I asked him "did you hear the fight last night?" and he said: "you can hear them, you don't even live next door to them". I said "yeah, I hear everything". It can real annoying when your nervous system allows your brain to register unwanted sounds.

I used to have to sleep with ear plugs because of Alan's snoring. He lost weight and does not snore anymore, but I swear I almost killed him once. I need complete quiet to sleep. But now, since I take Alprazolam at 11 p.m. it doesn't matter. I go to sleep and get up at 8 a.m. and feel just fine.

I also don't like to hear the screech of tires, or, if Alan and I are in Dunkin Donuts and people sit down at another table, and they pull out the chairs and make that awful screeching sounds. Goes right through my head.

I believe I have some sort of sensory stuff going on. It's not enough to drive me bonkers, but since I know it gets to me, there's nothing I can do. I can't stop the people upstairs from moving their kitchen table and chairs so they can wash the floor, but boy, when they move the kitchen table and chairs, the screeching is horrible. So I just learned to live with it. I conditioned my responsiveness to not let it drive me nuts.

And this is a person who used to live at discos in the 70's. Makes no sense whatsoever. I can go to a wedding and dance all night. But if I go to the movies with Alan, I have to put stuff in my ears because the sound is SOOO loud.

I also listen to the tv with headphones, so I tune out the rest of the world. I try and not do this from time to time. If I know that no one outside is in the backyard, then I put my tv on regular. But if there's people in the backyard, they will hear my tv and I don't want anybody knocking on the window saying "melody, turn down the tv". So I got in the habit of using headphones. I'm an odd little duck aren't I?

I also don't jack up the sound. I know better. But we live in a world of cars, blaring horns, teens playing music right next door to me, etc.

I will never forget the time when Anthony, the little juvenile delinquent who lives next door, was playing his stereo at night. It was 1 a.m. Alan was at work as a night time security guard.

So there I was, walking in my backyard, wondering where on earth is this loud music coming from. I wasn't the only one. The people downstairs came out of their house and we all looked at Anthony's backyard and into his bedroom window (which was open), and there, at 1 a.m. in the morning, was Anthony listening to his stereo at full blast.

The people downstairs started yelling in italian and grabbed the water hose and were about to shove the hose into his open window. Thank god I stopped them. They were going crazy. I just yelled at him. He stopped. He closed the window.

I wish I sometimes lived in the country like my friend does. She goes in her backyard and there are deer, and little animals. Now I don't like that stuff about animals coming to the back door, but I sure would like to be surrounded by quiet.

Melody