My wife finds it difficult, if not impossible, to talk while holding a paper towel. It is worst when she is holding a thick, premium quality type, and less severe when holding thin, bargain brand paper towels. This doesn’t happen when she holds any other type of object, even similar items like cloth towels, paper napkins, or tissues.
I was recently poking fun of her while at dinner with some friends, only to discover that one of our companions has a similar, though not identical reaction to pizza boxes (only the old-fashioned shiny cardboard ones, not the newer corrugated cardboard kind). He likens his experience of holding one to the fairly universal reaction most people have to the sound of fingernails on a blackboard; he even began shivering while describing the sensation.
My question is: does any one know the cause of such phenomenon? Is there a name? Or is this just a variation of the classic Straight Dope “piss-shiver” question (i.e. it just is)?
Yeah, but is this what the OP is talking about? I mean, when I was a kid, I couldn’t stand the feel of velvet on my skin (I’m still not crazy about it), but it’s never rendered me speechless. Am I understanding you correctly, asc165? Your wife literally can’t speak when holding a paper towel? Does she also dislike the feeling of the material, like your friend with the pizza boxes, or does it just have that weird effect on her?
She has no dislike of the feeling whatsoever, but holding the paper towel makes it at least difficult, sometimes impossible to speak. The pizza box thing just came up when we were discussing her quirk.
My teeth clench and my lips pull back in a grimmace when I cut or otherwise handle lettuce and other leafy greens like spinach. No idea why, but it’s happened as long as I can remember. I can eat salad with lettuce just fine, but if I’m making salad with lettuce or just holding a piece of lettuce, I usually get this reaction.
Oh, absolutely! I used to do ceramics when I was a teenager and I always hated the feel of the clay after it had been baked once and had turned white (I think this is called bisque). I never minded the feel of the greenware (after the liquid clay has been poured and hardened, but not baked) because it had a smooth, silky texture.
Again, though, this thing with asc165’s wife seems to be something other than just an aversion to a particular texture. I could hold and work with bisque and carry on a conversation at the same time, even though I hated the feeling of the thing in my hands. What’s going on with asc165’s wife is something I’ve never head of before. Very strange.
Two days ago, a nurse was working on installing a new I-V in my arm, when a political ad came on the television. She made a comment, and I had to tell her that I’m incapable of talking politics when someone is poking needles in me.
For me it’s things that are made of wood, when they are wet. Like a wooden spoon. Or the handle on one of those loofa things in the shower. It doesn’t render me speechless, but it DOES make me shudder.
My wife got a good chuckle after reading some of the replies (I posted at work without her knowledge, and told her when I got home - bad etiquette, I admit - luckily she doesn’t hold a grudge).
In any case, after a more in-depth discussion about her “symptoms”, I suspect her reaction is just a variation of the shudder-y, spine-tingly “chalkboard sensation” most of us have experienced at one time or another. She describes her speechlessness as resulting from a “clogged” feeling (no tingles) that creeps up her neck and fills her ears and head, temporary inhibiting and/or preventing her speech, more than an organic paralysis.
What triggers other’s experience of this phenomenon is fascinating, though. Keep ‘em coming.
I’ll bet some medical university would like to do an MRI of her brain while she is holding paper towels. That is fascinating.
I have had the experience of not being able to form coherent speech. I could see the words in my mind and I envisioned trying to hold them in place on a wall using my hands and elbows, but I could not get them out. (It was the result of not having enough food and water over a period of time.)
One weird thing that I’ve noticed about myself is that if I go into another room to get something and my mind forgets what it is that I’ve gone after, another part of my brain remembers and controls my arms and hands to send a physical signal. For example, if I have forgotten scissors, if I look at my hand, my fingers will be immitating scissor-like cutting movements.
