Halfway into the class though, a man comes in with two little girls (maybe around 6 years old). I tried to focus on the instructor but in-between me and the workout space was three bins of rubber medicine balls of various weights. Of course, the girls grabbed one of the balls, which wouldn't have been a big deal except they decided to play a game of catch right in front of me. The man, who I assume was their father, was standing right next to me so I asked him if they could play with the ball by the reception desk instead of right in front of me, because they were very distracting. He was nice enough to ask them to move, but I'm sure he probably thought my request was weird. What can I say? They were throwing the ball practically at my eye level right in front of me. I bet that even someone without misophonia would have been distracted with a game of catch being played right in front of their face.
This coming Tuesday, I will compete at the next level with my speech where I briefly talk about misophonia. We'll see what happens. I still need to cut it down a bit. The speech has to be between 5-7 minutes and if I go above 7 minutes 30 seconds, I'll get disqualified. It's been too close to 7 min 30 sec for my comfort.
On another note... I'd like to share a link to a new book that just came out by Wendy Aron. She's the author to whom I've referred a couple of times who has a regular misophonia column on the Psychology Today website. This book takes a humorous look at healthcare insurance and is called, "How a 52-Year-Old Neurotic Survived 24 Hours Without Health Insurance (and You Can Too)" Given how frantic people were last week trying to sign up at the last minute for Obama Care, this short Kindle publication is very timely. (I got quite a kick out of reading it too, especially since I'm on COBRA right now.)