GREY MUTTER lance fredericks Hypothetically under your skin

IHAVE always had difficulty understanding what people are trying to say to me when they speak. Perhaps it’s just the way am wired.

When meeting new people their names fly out of the window as soon as I hear them. The next time I run into them, I often address them as, “Hey there you …”.

I have never been an auditory learner. I will get bored and drift off within the first three minutes of a lecture, but can sit and read for hours. When people speak to me for the first time I first have to adjust my listening to the WAY they speak and how they form words before I can actually figure out what they’re trying to say.

I use the phrase “pardon me” quite a lot at the start of conversations.

I know that auditory learners do best with information that they can hear. They even tend to talk while they write. They do well listening to audio or live lectures or by participating in discussions.

I am more of a visual learner. I like to have something I can see. Illustrations are more easily stored in my noggin and information is best absorbed through what my eyes can take in. Of course I also enjoy some hands-on experience.

Maybe I am more of a visiokinestic learner. Keep me sitting for too long and I get restless – my brain AND my hands need to be kept occupied for me to function at my very best. Maybe that’s the reason why I, as a youngster, conjured up such weird images in my mind.

The concept of “lay-by”, for example, may be simple enough for the auditory person to understand, but I couldn’t figure out why people had to “lay by” the curtains, blankets or other items for months at a time.

I pictured that backroom, that “lay-by” room, crammed with employees of the store laying and hugging a packet full of goodies for customers. I reasoned that the money Mom was paying every few weeks was to buy them food.

Once I get my time machine to work, I may have to go back and apologise for my outbursts. Time travel, however, may be more of a challenge than most people imagine. Besides the other reasons that have been discussed ad nauseam, the other problem would be communication … even in simple English.

You see, recently I was pondering the words to a hymn entitled:

“Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne”

… I wondered, was the throne ugly or just uncomfortable? But remember “awful” is made up of the words “awe” meaning a feeling of inspiration or wonder, and the word “full” as in, the opposite of “empty”.

When the hymn was written it was a throne full of awe and wonder, and not a horrible piece of furniture.

Here’s the scary thing … thanks to the internet, English is changing at a rapid rate. People use words incorrectly and they see others online using the same word in the same (incorrect) way, and because of that, the misuse of a word will turn into the new definition.

It’s already happening to some words like the word “literally”.

You must have heard someone say something like: “When I saw the price of that dress, I literally died!” Well, if they were using literally correctly, they’d actually be dead.

“Entitled” is another of these misused words … scan up in this column and you will notice that I have used it incorrectly … entitled actually means “believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment”.

Like football fans of a popular team feeling justified in ransacking a stadium, because they feel “entitled” to always bring home silverware.

Or, someone else may feel that they, unlike other citizens in a city, are “entitled” to have accessories fitted to their vehicle so that during emergency situations they can be afforded special privileges to get through traffic. But why are they inherently deserving of special privileges or preferential treatment, one could ask.

Hypodermically speaking, of course.