Monday, November 4, 2024 Adventures with Mishearings

I’ve been having adventures with mishearings for years now. I’d like to blame it all on people not speaking clearly enough, but the common denominator seems to be my ears, not their voices. It’s often quite amusing when you compare what I heard versus what was said. I’ll share a few of these and then I fully expect some of you to share yours in the comments section.

I was telling a friend of mine about all the box elder bugs that were plaguing our house, particularly on sunny days. “Oh, I know,” she said, “my friend Dora is covered in them!” This brought to mind a very funny picture of poor Dora, but when I asked for clarification, she had actually said, “My front door is covered in them!”

My husband and I were on a walk and I had picked up a couple interesting leaves. He asked, “Are you going to put those on your straw hat?” Since I was not wearing a straw hat, I was somewhat confused. “What do you mean? I don’t have a straw hat!” I replied. That’s when I found out that he was completely uninterested in my leaves and was merely asking if I had put our walk on the Strava app.

Another time someone mentioned being back in a “couple hours,” but what I heard was “with flowers.” I like my version better, don’t you?

Lastly, one of our sons was doing the congregational prayer at our church a couple months ago. A young woman in our church had asked for prayer for her great aunt who was having fairly serious health problems and surgery. Our son was praying about this situation and to my surprise, inserted the phrase “unborn child” into the prayer. I pondered this for awhile, wondering what it meant. Maybe the young woman was expecting another baby (she was married and had two children). Hmmm. He was at our house later in the week and I asked him why he said something about an unborn child in the midst of his prayer. “I said no such thing!” he insisted. He had his prayer typed up and on his phone, so he looked it up. It turns out he had used the phrase “ongoing trial,” which made a lot more sense. We had a good laugh over that one.

Okay, it’s your turn!

I’ll probably repeat this in the morning (that’s what you heard anyway).