The Art of Mis-communication

OK, so I always rave on about how great words are. I know, imagine that, a writer who loves words...but even more fun is the misunderstanding of words, expressions, signs etc, it's truly an art form. It's not an art form that many practice knowingly but it brings relentless amusement to those that are gifted in this unwitting skill. Another part of this talent involves mishearing (not to be confused with Miss Herring, the temp French teacher, temporary teacher that is, not temporarily French, though she is temporarily made-up). Mishearing words and substituting what our brain conjured up in attempt to relieve the embarrassment of our inferior sense of hearing is an insane amount fun. It's as though, as soon as a sentence or string of words is not heard and digested clearly enough to form a coherent response, our brain hits the panic button and goes to Defcon 2.

'Holy hell what are we going to do?!' The pygmy brainiacs that are paying a slave labour wage out of their own transparently worn pockets, working 25 hours a day to feed a starving nation of countless bastard children, because their wives couldn't produce a son, start arguing with one another. "I thought you were catching that word.'

'No we agreed I take every second word and that was not a second word!'

'But we agreed that sounds count as words too and there was definitely a sound made in the infancy of that dialogue. Roll the Speechometer cam, yup there you go, definite vocal interaction going on there!'

So as I was saying, panic sets in one of them has an idea:

'OK here's what we'll do, we each think of a word that sounds like what we thought we heard then we play rock paper, scissors and the winner's word is the one that's catapulted out of the bosses mouth, deal?'

'Deal!'

'Builder bob...- jibbertyflub...on three, one, two_'

'Paper!' 'Scissors!' they yelled in unison.

'Yes! Jibbertyflub!' The victor bellows the random arrangement of letters bearing as much resemblance to the actual word as marzipan soldiers do the enactment of 'All the King's Men'.

Every day there are millions of misunderstandings and communications go off at all kinds of tangents and this is OK because it happens to all of us. As long as it does no harm to anyone. Of course if you mistake every word someone is saying then you should maybe concentrate a little harder, or they're probably going to stop talking to you. At the end of the day, the enjoyment and excitement of words in endless and free for everyone to enjoy so go on, have some jibbertyflub moments, there's an infinity of them waiting to be discovered.