I used to say I couldn't hear without my glasses on . . .I seem to lip read a lot.  It was a problem in the classroom with the way some adolescents mumble, some won't look at you, and some have teeny, tiny voices that are barely above a whisper.

One of the great jokes in our family occurred on a rainy day.  My daughter went out to open the garage door and yelled in, "What the combo" (since we had a lock).

I didn't know what she was asking THAT for and replied, "It's a region in Africa."

We repeated the sequence several times and then she came in and said, "No, I mean the combo-nation" and I answered,  "It's NOT a nation.  It's a region in Africa."

We laugh ourselves silly remembering that day, and the one when my son looked at a waitress and said, "She doesn't look hairy."  (We had called her a "harried waitress.")

The latest incident came last fall in the Ozarks. I was heading up the walkway to the neighbor's porch and my husband yelled in a loud and panicky way. I thought he had yelled "SNAKE,"  and I stopped in my tracks, my heart hammering and a cold sweat breaking out along my backbone.

As it turned out, he had simply yelled "WAIT!" because he thought we had gone to the wrong address.

We promised one another hearing aids for Christmas.  Haven't moved on that one yet, but it is time for sure.  He looked in the 'fridge and said, "Do you want juice?"