What Was That?

I've noticed lately that my hearing is not as sharp as it once was. For instance, when the whole second grade classroom is abuzz and some cherub whose voice doesn't ever raise above a lisping whisper says something to me, I have to bend to her level and say, "What was that?" repeatedly. If a train is hustling by I often can't hear my idling car engine. Likewise, when the phone is not pressed directly against my left ear (my "good" side), I often miss parts of the conversation from the other party and have to uh-huh and mmm-hmmm my way along until I pick up the gist of what I missed. I've gotten along just fine with what hearing I have left until last Sunday. Now I have cause to pause.

J and I were on our way home from a Transfer Station run when she suggested swinging by a fast food place and indulging in one of their inexpensive hot fudge sundaes. Any time the word fudge is mentioned I am all for whatever it is I need to do to get it. Besides, it was a beastly hot day and ice cream sounded like a bowl of heaven so off we went. We pulled up to the talking order board and when the scratchy voice asked us what we wanted, J leaned out the window and said, "Two hot fudge sundaes, please."

"Do you want double fudge for an extra dollar?" inquired the board.

J looked at me. "Double fudge?" I asked. J nodded. "Sure!" we both said at the same time, I to J and J to the talking board.

"Pull around," said the board so we did.

At the window, a young fellow handed J a small paper bag. She passed it to me and I looked inside. Surely our sundaes could not be in there. Just as I suspected, they weren't. What was in there were two apple pies.

"These are apple pies!" I exclaimed. J looked at me with raised eyebrows. She whisked the bag from my hand and gave them back to the fellow saying, "We ordered hot fudge sundaes, not apple pies."

"Oh, the sundaes are coming," he said with a smile. "You agreed to the pies for an extra dollar. They're our special this week."

J's eyebrows crept up another notch. "We did?" she asked me. "Did you hear anything about apple pies?"

"Double fudge," I said enunciating each syllable, then "Apple pie." No way did double fudge sound like apple pie, even if I dragged the syllables out. I shook my head at J. "Nope," I said. "We agreed to double fudge. Who eats apple pies with hot fudge sundaes?"

"We don't want the pies, thanks," she told the window guy, but he handed them back to her saying that since they couldn't put them back we might as well take them and he'd deduct the dollar from our bill.

"Stranger things have happened," he intoned, his own eyebrows rising for emphasis.

All the way home we puzzled over the misunderstanding. Who could mistake double fudge for apple pie? Apparently two hot, tired, more-than-middle-aged, on-the-twenty-year-plan old bats like us because between them, those sundaes didn't have enough fudge to qualify as a single serving, never mind double. It was all very disconcerting.

I've been practicing the two phrases. If I speak through a paper towel tube with a piece of saran wrap held tightly over one end and I mumble, you might mistake one for the other, but you'd have to be hard of hearing in the first place.