“Misheard” is a form of the verb, “mishear,” meaning to misunderstand another person, to hear incorrectly, to mistakenly or fail to hear accurately. ~ from a collage of definitions within The Free Dictionary online.
Strode in thru the Employees Only entrance to work and marched up to the main counter there in Reception/Admin to check today’s work schedules. Brant, one of the star anchors, was hanging up el telefono. Well, he’s on a headset for his job, so he completed the call.
“Dog lying bitch,” I heard him say.
Whoa! I thought to myself as such behavior is so unlike Brant. He is professional and comes off publicly as calm, unruffled, as cool as a cat wearing sunglasses up on a warm tin roof on a sunny day in May. Underneath he’ll stew and simmer a little bit, but, hey, he checks it. He checks it!
But “dog lying bitch?” Say what?!
So I checked with the guy. Being a Hard-of-Hearing man wearing bilateral hearing aids, my senses perceive whatever they perceive, my brain filters what is picked up, and my mind interprets what it thinks it heard.
“Hey, you ok?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said as he stared at the row of computer screens glowing in front of him.
“Good, because I wanted to check in with you,” I said. “I thought I heard you mutter ‘dog lying bitch’ when you got off that last call. And, y’know, that’s not like you.”
He turned around and stared at me. Burst into laughter.
“Oh no, what I said was, ‘golf flying disc.’”
My turn to stare.
“You know, with a frisbee, disc golf, like with frisbee as in frisbee golf.”
“Shit,” I said and laughed. Laughed hard, too. “I know what frisbee golf is and what golf discs are.” It’s a popular sport around Seattle.
Then I looked down and spotted a lost pin. Squatted down to pick it up. Twas a little bitty angle pin.
“Hey, I found an angel pin,” I said.
“Oh, I think that may belong to Jen,” Golf Flying Disc Man said.
So went upstairs on my way towards the department I was scheduled to work in. Stopped where Jen worked in hers on the way to mine, and held out my hand.
“Hey, is this yours? I found this little bitty angel pin downstairs, and heard it might be yours.”
She stared, smiled, then burst into laughter.
“That’s not an angel pin. That’s Princess Lea. From Star Wars! So glad you found it, tho. Thank you!”
“Well, isn’t Princess Lea a kind of an angel now?” I said, and Jen nodded with a happy grin.
Princess Lea, played by the late Carrie Fisher (1956-2016), has indeed become a cultural icon and in many ways, angelic. The first Star Wars movie, later called A New Hope, came out in late May 1977. The film remains iconic. Had turned 18 about a month before the movie released, and I raced to watch it. I remember the long lines, the magnificent and awe-inspiring drama thundering and flashing across the big screen, and less then a month later I graduated from high school.
Nearly 47 years later after seeing the movie in different places around the same time, Jen gave me a thank you hug for finding her pin.
Later in the afternoon, she’d lost her little Carrie Fisher angel pin again.
All from initially mishearing “dog lying bitch.”
Well, this day was a Friday the 13th. This time of December. The last one of the year 2024 CE.
William Dudley Bass
Thursday 13 March 2025
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol
Copyright © 2025 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.