I was at lunch with a friend of mine today, and I described Central Auditory Processing disorder to her. She responded by giving me very good, detailed examples of what she thinks that I mean and she is spot on because she was describing some of her own experiences. Small world we live in, eh?

In some ways, it should be a surprise. CAP folks are likely to be happier with other CAP folks because, you know, we don't irritate each other. (OK, we PRESUMABLY don't irritate each other, at least not via our sound environment.)

I came up with a nice analogy.

Imagine having a band and an audience. You've got this great setup, from the mics to the mixer to the amp to the speakers. It's all PERFECT. Now, imagine that you have a total asshole running your sound board. Just how good do you think that the band will sound? CAP is the asshole at your mixer, doing whatever he wants, and sometimes going out for the smoke in the middle of a set.

I like to think of CAP as needing glasses, but you can't get glasses for your processing. So it's a pain in the ass sometimes, but really, it's just life and you get on with it. There are worse handicaps to have. Meanwhile, in school, there's nothing to prevent your peers from being total asshole because that's about the only thing that your peers are any good at.