Terms of mis-hearment

Good morning, gentle readers. Today marks the third "really cool Wednesday" in a row, but sadly it looks to be the last. We had my birthday, the 4th of July, and now today, 7/11. July 18th shows me nothing on my calendar, and the only holiday I can find online for it is Constitution Day in Uruguay. Get your cards now before the mad rush on the 17th. Warning: this is a very disjointed post, so I hope you're not in the mood for linear, coherent story-telling.

In yesterday's post, I wrote about one of the famous moments of me mis-hearing things. There are three stories at the top of the list, and you've now heard two of them. The first was laid out in detail in the "Living a Lie" post in February about my first day of public school, and the second was the famed "Peter We Can See You Now" exaggerated story. The third really doesn't lend itself to the written word, so I'll tell a quick and less humorous version.

When I was about 11 years old, my parents started looking for a new house. I always enjoyed looking at the houses we went to, mainly because I would immediately look for where I'd play and which room would be mine. One story that's become famous in the Klein household was when we looked at a house that was a lot smaller than my parents anticipated. The "third bedroom" ended up being nothing more than a closet that could fit a twin bed. I poked my head in, turned to my parents and sadly said, "I guess this is my room." That's actually not the story I meant to tell though. This is:

One day while visiting a house on the market, my parents went off by themselves and I wandered around with the realtor lady. After they were done, I followed my parents back to the car. They didn't like the house very much, and discussed it for a few minutes. When they were done, I asked them a question that had been bothering me for twenty minutes: "How did that lady know my name?" They asked what I meant, so I told them. "We were walking around, and I saw a door that didn't look like it went anywhere. I asked her what it was, and she said, 'Oh, that's just the hot water, Peter.'" My parents exploded into big guffaws. "Are you sure she didn't say 'hot water heater?'" my mom asked, still coming down from the laughter attack. I thought about it and realized that she was probably right.

Yes, I made a mistake there, but I really don't think that was all my fault. My name happens to rhyme with a lot of things, and it's very confusing at times. "Heater" still gets me fairly often, in fact. Additionally, I've looked up countless times in my life after people have actually said "cheater" or even "wife beater" instead of my name. Good times.

Talking about mis-hearing things reminds me of one of my favorite exchanges in movie dialogue history. From Steve Martin's modern (and happy-ending) version of "Cyrano de Bergerac" called "Roxanne":

Charlie: Ten more seconds and I'm leaving! Ten-
Roxanne: What did you say?
Charlie: I said ten more seconds and I'm leaving.
Roxanne: Oh.
Charlie: What did you think I said?
Roxanne: I thought you said, "Earn more sessions by sleeving."
Charlie: What does that mean?
Roxanne: I don't know. That's why I asked.

I love it. That is right in line with my sense of humor, and it works its way into conversation more often than it should. If my lovely wife mentions that she gets three yoga sessions with a particular pass, I'll suggest that she sleeve to make it four or five. It's funny, because I always thought that quote was under the radar, but a quick Google search for "earn more sessions" shows that I'm far from alone in utilizing it.

I actually had a somewhat similar conversation with someone in real life. "Somewhat" being the operative word, of course. I was at summer camp, and my counselor said he didn't want to go on a certain hike. Being the kid form of the adult I am today, I quoted a movie. "What's the matter, Colonel Sanders...chicken?" I asked, invoking Rick Moranis. "What?" he replied. I was about to say it again, but first wanted to know what he had heard. "There's a Matterhorn in Los Angeles, chicken," came back as the answer. I can see why he questioned me.

Ok, gentle readers. I'm going to ask for your input on something. We all have a bunch of mis-heard song lyrics in our memory banks. Some from us, some from our friends, and some from strangers. Here's what I'm asking. Please do not post these in today's comments section. Instead, I would like to write a whole post or two about this topic next week, so email them to ptklein@gmail.com. Please email me as many as you can, because I know we all have these and it would be great to spend some time going through them and putting them back out there for laughs. Can you help me out here or am I getting too specific with my help requests? Feel free to comment on the other disjointed parts of this post of course, but I don't want to spoil the funnies of misunderstood lyrics. Ya dig?

Thanks, and enjoy this 7/11 post. In honor of the stores, it'll be up for 24 hours.