Most people have the same reaction when they can’t understand what somebody says. It is simple, elegant and concise — “What?” However, after the second, third or twentieth time of asking someone to repeat what they said, the conversation comes to an awkward halt. To avoid this issue, assumptions must be made about what people say. If your brain is anything like mine, these assumptions are often entirely incorrect.
The problem started when I learned to speak. In my mind, the elderly women in the locker room before my swimming lessons were “maked.” When I got tired of dangling from a monkey bar by myself for 20 minutes on the playground, I sat on the “vench.” Melman, the giraffe in Madagascar, was instead named “Mormon.” My parents attempted to model good manners at the dinner table. However, instead of saying, “May I please be excused?” after each meal, I would ask, “May I please have my shoes?”
My parents were amused. Others were not. In first-grade gym class, we were learning how to play frisbee. “It’s all in the wrist,” shouted my gym teacher, Mr. Nick. We formed two lines, and he handed out frisbees. We began fidgeting with them immediately. Mr. Nick made one rule crystal clear — we were not to throw the frisbees until he expressly told us to.
I spaced out for a few minutes while Mr. Nick lectured us about boring details, such as how to throw a frisbee. Before I knew it, he shouted, “Throw your frisbees!” I spun back to gather momentum like the Olympic discus throwers I had seen on TV. I catapulted the frisbee across the room and watched it slice through the air toward my classmate Lucy.
Thwack! My frisbee smacked Lucy in the forehead. Mr. Nick ran to her as she wept. While he comforted her, his eyes rose to glare at me.
“I told you, ‘Don’t throw your frisbees yet!’”
“Mr. Nick, I heard you yell, ‘Throw your frisbees.’ I followed your directions.”
It was a rough day for Lucy.
The incidents did not stop there. One lucky afternoon in early high school, I boarded the bus, and my crush sat next to me. I waited in nervous silence on the 15-minute drive home as I clutched my clarinet case, which looked more like an odd plastic briefcase from the dollar store. The bus had already turned onto my street when my crush asked, “Do you have an instrument?” I gestured toward my plastic briefcase and said, “Yes, clarinet! Do you play an instrument?” My crush paused and furrowed his brow. “I asked if you had an Instagram.” The bus doors opened at my stop. As I scurried away, I exclaimed, “Oops, it’s my stop!” That was our first and last conversation.
I am not the only one who mishears people in crucial moments. My mom and dad stood at the altar during their wedding ceremony. As my mom held her bouquet, she felt a piercing pain below her left thumb. She looked down and saw a bee stinging her hand. She glanced at my dad with tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m being stung by a bee,” she whispered. He flicked the bee off of her hand and stomped on it. It’s hard to be discreet about crushing a bee to death with your foot.
A bridesmaid named Lauren noticed my dad’s violent stomping — a practice not typically included in wedding vows. She leaned over and asked, “What’s going on?” My dad answered, “She was stung by a bee!” Lauren nodded and smiled with a twinkle in her eye, saying, “So sweet.”
After the ceremony, the stinger was still embedded in my mom’s hand, and her arm was swollen to the size of a baseball bat. Alarmed by its size, Lauren asked, “What happened to your arm?” Only then did they realize that Lauren’s perspective of the wedding ceremony was quite different. After she’d expressed concern about my dad’s aggressive stomping, she thought that my dad said, “She’s standing by me,” in disbelief as my mom stood beside him. She was touched that he felt like the luckiest guy on the planet to be standing next to my mom.
My mom popped a drowsy Benadryl on the way to her reception. Many of the photos show her napping in the corner.
Even though misheard words can land you in sticky situations, listening carefully is boring. Hear what you want to hear. Before you know it, you’ll be flinging frisbees and taking names — the wrong names.
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