Cultural Mysophobia

In my last post, I meticulously described in great detail how the sound of the human chew grated on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard.  I thought that I would explore this a little further.
My earliest memory of agitation with mastication brings me to my grandfather.  My grandparents were notorious for preparing a big breakfast every morning.  It was just a normal part of the day for them.  I'm not talking about cereal; it was eggs, bacon, biscuits, gravy, the works, and this was day in and day out.  I can remember as a youngster sitting there watching with awe as my grandfather prepared his food.  Naturally I was curious to see how he ate, how he prepared his food, how he approached his morning meal.  The truth was that whether I wanted to or not, I had to see it.  We ate at a bar that spread from the kitchen over into the living area.  It was a perfect place to sit, spread out the food, and eat.  The only problem was that when you were eating together, you were really eating together.  If you could have seen me and my grandparent's spacial bubbles while we sat at that bar, it would have looked like the Olympic rings.  We were in each other's space in the worst way.  You could see each pass of the fork to the mouth, each mucus coated guy wire stretching from the roof of the mouth to the tongue, each pouch of food being drawn to the stomach while the adam's apple pulsed and pumped like some type of industrial press forcing the food along an assembly line.  It was too much, too much.
I couldn't have been very old when I came to the conclusion that hearing bodily actions up close and personal was something that I just couldn't handle.  I'm guessing I was probably about 4 or 5 years old at the most.  Thinking about the "why" of this has led me to an even worse conclusion about myself.  I don't like being close to other humans, even family members.  Wow!  Did you just hear that?  That was the psycho alert that just went off.  Who doesn't like being next to their family member?  Now you know at least one person that fits that bill. But it's not just family members; if you  are in any way different than me, no let me rephrase that, if you're NOT me, I would rather you keep your distance.
As I look closer, it seems like my dislike of chewing  is more a function of just being close to people in general.  It seems that if I'm close enough to see what's really taking place in the lives of others as opposed to my ideal picture then I am uncomfortable.  I have to admit, this goes for emotional closeness as well, talk about messy.  Being close means you see and hear things that you ordinarily would not, so staying at a distance allows me to keep my assumptions about the world around me in place.  Because of this, I don't have to do much; I don't have to change or adjust to the reality of the human experience.  I mean if we really look at this, I am attempting live this life as if I were the only human who has the right to be fully human, the only one who can eat, breath, and live uninhibited.  With my rationale and my desire to make everyone else into exactly what I want them to be, I am separating myself from the possibility of a deeper human experience.
I used to think that I was a freak, boarder line Howie Mandel, but I think there is a principle here, or at the very least a type of behavior that many of us engage in on a regular basis.  I'm not trying to get all preachy here, but think about it for a second.  How many times have we locked ourselves in the bubble of our own world and our own reality and missed THE reality that there are actually others that think, act, and feel differently than we do?  Instead of distancing ourselves from the "different" in the world around us, it seems to me that if we would just take the time to move a little closer to those who we think are so different we just might see how similar we are.  That's the problem isn't it; taking the time to take a close look at others makes us take a closer look at ourselves, and that can be scary.