When deafness and zippers collide

Do you ever have those moments when someone will say something to you and you have no idea what they said, so you ask them to say it again --only to have no idea what they said all over again?

It happens to me more often than I'd like.

I'm actually a good listener as long as I know the other person is about to speak and I'm looking at them.

But when a person randomly walks up and says something, I get this look on my face that makes it appear as if my IQ has dropped to that of cucumber -- when really it's just me trying to register in my brain what he or she could have possibly said.

A certain occurrence sticks out in my mind.

It happened while I was in the waiting room at the dentist's office when I was about 10. I was flipping through the latest issue of "Boy's Life" and wearing my new Bugle Boy jeans when an older man sat down next to me.

"Blishymagonfishcereal?" he asked with a smile.

"What?"

"Blishymagonfishcereal?"

"..."

"Blishymagonfishcereal?"

"Yeah," I said with a smile.

That's another thing. Why do we always assume when we can't understand someone that it's a yes or no question?

He could have been telling me he was the infamous Waiting Room Killer and was warning me to get out. And my simple response would have been a smiling "Yeah."

To this day I still have no idea what he was saying to me. More than likely he was complimenting my choice of stone-washed denim wear.

Another recent incident happened at work when the zipper on my pants was down, and people were politely trying to tell me what an idiot I looked like.

"Your fly..." a co-worker said.

"Yeah," I replied with a satisfying grin as I walked away with my zipper still down.

Apparently I really have a problem with my zipper, because it happened on campus the very next day. When I went outside I put my new, ultra-cool Aviators on and began walking to my car.

That's when I noticed a couple of the people I passed glance and then stifle their laughter.

Unfortunately, my "Yeah, I'm cool" state-of-mind made me oblivious to the fact that the glare of my open fly could be seen from Jupiter.

It's in those situations where I honestly wouldn't care if a complete stranger just came up to me and said, "Your fly is down." I'd actually appreciate it.

But then again, I'd probably say "What?", they'd repeat, and a smiling "Yeah" would follow as I continued whistling down the sidewalk unaware that I was a walking joke.

I honestly don't know what I'll do. What's going to happen when I get older and my hearing gets even worse? And I don't even want to think about how often my inability to remember my zipper will offend people.

Now that I think about it, maybe that guy in the waiting room was actually trying to tell me my fly was undone. Wait, those Bugle Boys were elastic so that couldn't have been it. That only leaves one other possible explanation -- I was sitting next to the Waiting Room Killer.

Oh, I'm probably overreacting. He may have just been asking me to pass him the new issue of "Waiting Room Killer Weekly."

Sam DeReign is a sophomore at Southeast Missouri State University. Contact him at sdereign @semissourian.com.