She is sitting in the living room watching TV; he is in the kitchen rooting around for snacks. Her (shouting): “Could you bring me a glass of water?” He (shouting back): “You want me to splash your father??” She: “What??” He: “Pardon??”
It’s interesting when you get to be a certain age and your hearing starts to go a bit south. Like your knees, hips, shoulders etc. And many bodily functions. . The Better Half and I were watching the Oilers win another game (sorry, flickering Flames fans!) when there was a scramble around the net and the announcer yelled the way announcers do: “McDavid almost scored on his older brother Steven!” I then exclaimed to the B.H.: “McD. doesn’t have a brother playing goal!” We rewound the game and re-listened. The announcer had actually said: “McDavid almost scored and but now it’s still even!”
And this kind of thing seems to happen all the times these days. Our friends Bonnie and Trevor have been married a long time, and they recently had to make a rule: “Only talk to each other when we are in the same room at the same time.” That’s not a bad rule, even though misheard, mistaken and misunderstood conversations can easily take place when you’re sitting on the couch together watching a hockey game.
There are a million and one stories of miscommunication. One oft-told tale is about an elderly fellow who gets new hearing aids and can hear ten times better than his old hearing aids. He hasn’t told his family he can now hear their conversations. He’s changed his will three times in the last month.
Or there’s the very old joke about the lady who got a new fangled hearing aid. “It’s fantastic!” she exclaimed to a friend. “I can hear everything perfectly.” “What kind is it?” her friend asked. “Two thirty.”
And this supposedly true little tale was on an amusing site called BoredPanda.com. A fellow was in the hospital getting examined for kidney stones. “I need to check your ‘peepee’” the nurse said. Well, um, OK, so he shrugged and pulled up his hospital gown for a full Monty. “Your BP!” the nurse yelped, “I need to check your blood pressure!”
And then there’s the nagging wife: “Dear, I think you need a hearing test!” Indignant husband: “Why on earth do I need a hairy chest?!”
I hadn’t been out to a movie for a long time, so I dragged my sorry carcass to the theatre the other evening, and about five minutes into it, I got the feeling something wasn’t right. The actors were mumbling and the dialogue was muffled and then I finally realized what the problem was. For a brief second I was actually rummaging around in the theatre seats to find the clicker to put the words on the screen! (Not kidding.)
There were no subtitles. Oh, the film was in English all right, but I admit it: at home on TV or computer screen I have to activate the subtitles on pretty much everything I view so that I can hear the verbal audio, if you know what I mean. And at that movie I didn’t have my official dialogue checker (the BH) with me at the time: (Nudge nudge – ‘What’d he say??’) Wouldn’t it be great subtitles floated in the air when we are having conversations? Just sayin’.
Although hearing loss is certainly not a laughing matter, sometime you just have to nod and fake it. And try to smile through the mumbles.
So in summing up the spirit of today’s theme of hard-of-hearing humor, what’s better than a classic Knock Knock joke:
Knock knock…
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Knock knock…
Knock knock………..
Harley Hay is a Red Deer author and filmmaker. Reach out to Harley with any thoughts or ideas at harleyhay99@gmail.com.