Thursday, March 25, 2010

Who's Writing These Lyrics?

Here's a little piece of personal trivia.

I don't always hear (quite) everything I should. Those of you who have ever had an actual conversation with me, have probably figured this out.

If you're not facing me when you're talking to me, I'm not going to hear you. If you're across the room and the TV's on, I'm not going to hear you. If you've just said something to me and I'm staring blankly and nodding, I've given up. I haven't understood a word you just said and I'm now trying to fake my way out of the conversation, completely.

It's always been this way for me and I don't consider it a big deal. I don't intend to do anything about it so don't refer me to you ear, nose and throat guy. Been there, done that.

It frustrates my three-year-old at times, which only serves to amuse me.

Three-year-old: "mumble mumble mumble"
Me: "Pardon?"

Three-year-old (slightly louder): "mumble mumble mumble"
Me: "Pardon???"

Three-year-old: annoyed sigh "LISTEN!"
Me: "Hey, it's not my fault, I can't hear you!"

My sister (nhoward in the comments section) can empathise with his pain. She's been repeating herself for me, her whole life. Except, I don't actually try to understand what she's saying. I usually just take a wild guess and repeat what I think she's said. I usually 'think' I've heard something pretty ridiculous. This annoys her very much and she starts ranting about how I don't even try to understand people anymore. It's true, and I find I'm more relaxed.

Given my propensity to miss words in conversation, it's no surprise that I was pretty ill-suited to my former occupation as a receptionist.

Customers would call in and if there was the least bit of background noise, on either end of the phone, I couldn't hear them and didn't know who they were calling for. I would have them repeat themselves a couple of times, three if I thought there was any hope of catching what they wanted, and then I'd give up and forward the, now exasperated, caller to the service department. There, the caller would repeat themselves again and be forwarded to the person they actually phoned to speak to.

It was a survival technique. For some reason, I preferred people to think I was incompetent rather than admit I wasn't hearing properly.

Anyway, I'm bringing this up because I was jogging today, in the cold and the wind, and I was listening to my iPod as I trotted and shivered along. With the ear buds and without distractions, it was the first time I'd heard some of the songs clearly and...dios mio some were down right raunchy!

I had to look up some of the terminology on urbandictionary.com to fully understand what was going on and then, ey ey ey double dios mio! I'm glad I was the only one who could hear it. I was probably blushing through half the run.

11 comments:

  1. It is scary listening to the things some artists say in songs. As a mom, it scares me A LOT!

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  2. Aha I can just see you running down the street making strange faces and blushing! Imagine what the neighbours were thinking! I mean... you're probably the neighbourhood crazie now! Congrats!

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  3. Stopping by from SITS! I sometimes am quite startled by the lyrics of some songs these days too. Hope you have a great day! :)

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  4. Oh, I was already the crazy lady in the neighbourhood. No change there.

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  5. I'm your newest follower from FF. Can't wait to read more, stop by my blog sometime! Happy FF!

    -K

    http://mypottyseat.blogspot.com/

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  6. There's so much more to you that annoys me, perhaps I'll start a blog.

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  8. That's disgusting. You can't do that to a dog, it's totally irresponsible.

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  9. Hi :-)
    Following a little late from the Friday Follow :-)
    The list is soooo long!
    You can follow me at http://savvycouponmommy.blogspot.com
    Have a great weekend!

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  10. Thanks for stopping by my Double Wide yesterday. Good luck with the whole jogging thing. Blushing burns more calories so just go with it!

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