Pickles by Brian Crane for September 04, 2021

Too much like some real conversations around here. Ours has a particularly annoying pattern: When I don’t hear clearly, I ask for a repeat which peeves Spouse immensely. When Spouse doesn’t hear clearly, she either ignores the whole thing (75%) or makes up something that’s often close to what I said, but with one or more words missing. “Not” being one such missing word… and gets peeved when I then ask her to repeat it back or go ahead and answer the question (“Oh, was that a question?”)… which peeves me…

Why wouldn’t Opal say anything when she didn’t say anything in the first place? You’re bored, Earl?

Here it’s what do want to eat? I don’t know what do you want? And on and on!

Yes Dear he says while reading the paper clueless of what she said or did not say!

Enough said….

My wife and I have agreed that we only talk to each other while in the same room!

Saves an awful lot of miscommunication!

Earl face to face works better than yelling ;-)

Picking up on the imaginary conversation and creating a real one, Earl?

Count your blessings Earl. Opal had nothing to complain about.

A little content heavy today, don’t you think?

Had this kind of trouble, but a simple audio amplifier took care of it. When you lose the high frequencies, you have trouble hearing consonants.

What?!?

This cartoon is in the ( ditch ) for sure , no imagination at all . Where is the precious Roscoe in the first frame ?

“You need new hearing aids.”

“No thanks. I don’t want any earrings made.”

This is real life, being profoundly deaf myself, its like don’t talk to me from another room

Could be a “conversation” in out house.

My Honey can hear a mosquito land on a pillow. But she insists, I have to come to her, to talk.

Getting old is not for the weak!

That is so funny….”why not”?

Brian’s been eavesdropping at our house, again!

Ollie noticed he and Lena, his wife, seemed to have new trouble communicating. He wanted her to have her hearing checked, but to convince her, he needed to test her hearing. She was in the kitchen, cooking. Standing near the kitchen, he said “Lena, honey, What’s for dinner?” Not getting a reply, he moved into the kitchen. “Lena, dear, What’s for dinner?” Not getting a reply, he moved behind her. “Lena, sweetheart, What’s for dinner?” She said “Chicken! For the third time!”

Here when I didn’t get what my hubby said, he repeats it EXACTLY the way he said it the first time. I have told him for YEARS, please just raise the register of your voice and project a bit when you repeat something. I didn’t hear it the first time, not going to hear it the next time, either. Grrrrr.

His tinnitus is at the Morse Code stage.

Eeeh? Speak up….I have a banana in my ear…

So, this rather “thrifty” fella’s doctor tells him it’s time to get hearing aids. He of course wants to shop around for a bargain.He is first shown a pair of state of the art, noise cancelling, rechargeable, hidden in the ear, aids.The price $6,000. Do you have anything for less ? So he is shown a pair a bit larger, that require battery changes. priced at $4,000, still to steep for him. Next up behind the ear, clip on, $2,500, the same thing, but not with the noise cancelling feature, $900. He says, “I saw on TV them advertising volume amplifiers thingys that supposed to fit anyone’s budget.” The clerk says," we do have something similar, but they are not recommended for someone with your type of hearing loss."… “Yeah, yeah.how much ?” “$600”…“AND that’s all ya got?!” Sighing the clerk reaches down into drawer, comes up with a box and say’s “This runs $19.95.” “Now your talking!” He opens the box, and says “This looks like an old transistor radio, wired with ear pods.” “That is an old transistor radio”…“Well how does THAT work ?” “Simple, you clip it to your belt or shirt pocket, people see it and automatically shout at you .”

Welcome to MY world..!!!!!!

“Well say something so I can ignore you!”

At the end of the day Earl and Opal still love each other very much. They make passionate love several times a week. ;)

I wish my spouse would just ignore me when he doesn’t hear what I said, instead of picking out a few key words and fabricating the rest of the sentence (and yes, often leaving out “not”) according to what he thinks I might have wanted to say, and proceeds with complete confidence that he heard me. In our case, a language barrier is part of the communication gap. I’ll never understand people who don’t recognize that they don’t know a word.

The most irritating thing to me about asking for a repeat is when I hear “mumble, mumble, mumble Saturday.” and I say “What?” and I get “Saturday.”

This comes from a kind of egotism where the speaker feels that up until the moment the illusion is shattered with “what?” the target’s mind was in lockstep with his.