M: Memory – Could you repeat that? (WR)

Could you repeat that?

There are many things that happen to our bodies and senses as we age. Those bones that never creaked before. The obnoxious hiss that I hear perpetually in my ear from tinnitus. The graying and loss of hair. There are all those memory issues and there are also all those memory issues. One change that can be bothering, yet at times somewhat amusing, is the changes in hearing.

The frustrating part is not being able to hear what people are saying. When I’m teaching and there are multiple students speaking I’m constantly asking students to repeat themselves. Clearly the best way for me to understand what someone is saying is to be facing them while they speak and have no other sound distractions to compete with them. When that doesn’t happen I either don’t understand a word that is spoken or my brain decides to interpret what it thinks it heard.

This happens a lot at home, where my wife and I can be talking to each other from a different room, or our phone connection isn’t crisp or one or both of us is speaking in a low voice or mumbles. I’ve decided to keep track of some of our misheard conversations in the hopes that someday, I can put them into a song.

Here are some examples:

“Putting extra carrots in a ziplock” became “Putting extra carrots in the dishwasher” (you really do need to wash them before eating them)

“Spiced apple cake with orange glaze” became “Spiced Apple Pay with orange glaze.” (Instead of different colored iPhones and Apple watches, Tim Cook and Apple are creating different flavored ones)

“Looking for the car lease deal” became “looking for Carly Seal”  (whoever she is)

“Ribbon Cutting at Chick-fil-A” became “Women butting at Chick-fil-A” (That’s a new extreme sport)

“I talked to Sherry about car leasing” became “I talked to Sherry about harvesting” (I didn’t even know that Sherry was into farming)

I used to just accept what was said and move on. Since this is happening more and more, I now pause when something I hear seems a little out of context and verify that what I heard was correct. More often than not it isn’t. Considering the alternative is not to hear at all, I’ll take those mishearings. Who knows, it might give me something to write about.