Telling On Myself

Fun in the '60s

I'm always preaching to members of my family about speaking clearly and distinctly because I have begun to lose some of that wonderful gift that God gives most of us, the blessed sense of hearing. I haven't reached the hearing-aid stage, but that sense has diminished somewhat, and I am very sensitive about not being able to hear as clearly as I have in the past. I have great empathy for those who cannot hear at all.

I wandered in my mind this morning to two separate occasions from long ago when I had misunderstood certain phrases or titles because I hadn't heard it spoken clearly or perhaps I just wasn't listening. I was a much younger girl then.

When Richard Nixon was president of the U.S. we often heard about his home estate in California.  One day at work my friends were talking about it. I heard it mentioned as I approached them.  "Sam Clemente," I echoed what I had heard them say.  "I have heard of him somewhere. Where do I know that name from?"  They all laughed and answered that they were speaking of the President's estate, San Clemente.  "Oh, yeah.  I knew I'd heard that before."  Truly, I needed to pay closer attention to the newscasts.

The first time I made such an error I was ten years younger, and at least I didn't have to face my embarrassment immediately.  It has given my own children much laughter whenever they recall my telling of the story.  I understand, because in my mind it is funny now.

It was circa 1966, the years of much partying and dancing and enjoying our youth.  We spent most of our Friday or Saturday nights going to a small town night club/dive to drink and dance to live music played by upstart local bands. Some of those bands went on to record some pretty good music, and a couple of them became mid-western legends and played together for many years. The bands played the popular music of the day while we danced the nights away.

One night, as was often done, I approached the band during  a pause between songs and asked them to play one of my favorite songs of the day.  I yelled as loud as I could to call out to them over the noise of the crowd even though I was no farther than four feet from them. "Will you please play State Trooper?"  They looked at one another then looked at me with questioning eyes. "What?" one of them called to me.  "STATE TROOPER!!!" I screamed it as loud as I could, and still they just stared at me with blank expressions.  I made my request one more time, but all they could answer was that they didn't know the song and had never heard of it.

I was pretty miffed by that time.  I had heard this band play many times, and had heard them play this song.   Why weren't they understanding me?

I have to admit that it was a few years before I finally realized why my request had fallen on deaf ears.  And I am so thankful to this day that the guys in that band had no clue as to what song I was requesting.  At least, I hope they never figured it out.  And I'm glad I didn't mention it to the group I was with, so they didn't realize my error.  They certainly would have gotten a good laugh.  You see the musical group that made this song popular was The Beatles, and the song that I loved to hear the band play was "Day Tripper."

https://www.google.com/#q=day+tripper