Ya Don't Say!

I am rounding the corner into a new phase of middle aged fatherhood. One where both of my children are past being babies and are on their way to normal little children. It is a relief in one sense, as they are getting are articulate and able to express their needs and desires without crying and pointing. " I want some juice", or "Can I have an XBox?" Unfortunately, they are also able to express their feelings of outrage at having a older and therefore defective father. I get asked questions like: "Daddy, why are you fat?" or "My friend Tommy says his grandmother knew you in high school, Is that true?" and my favorite; "Daddy, when I grow up can I be better than you?"

One problem (and by extension, their problem) that I am experiencing  is selective and non selective hearing loss. The older I get the more I tune out. In my defense, there is a lot of noise to filter. Kids are always humming, screaming, or incessantly begging. The TV is always on. Washer and dryer always running. The wife constantly crying out to God to forgive for whatever she did so she can be set free from this hell.

I have developed a hearing filter that allows only certain kinds of sounds in. Calls to dinner. Items breaking or about to get broken get priority processing. inappropriate dialogue on broadcast media. Any of these will trigger a physical response which sets my body in motion to stop the potentially damaging behavior. Case in point, I was making breakfast this morning and heard something from PBS that triggered the filter. I leaped into action and changed the channel because the narrator said they were going to have a dinosaur *mating* game. My feeling is that if I cannot watch mating rituals on late night cable TV, then my kids cannot see it during the day. There were of course dueling squeals of displeasure, and my wife came to the rescue and switched it back, because they were only having a dinosaur NAMING game. My bad.

I may be at a bit of a disadvantage because our household is frequented by lots of non native English speaking peoples as well as those who do speak English as their first language, they just learned it in a different part of the world. I routinely have to mentally transliterate three year old,  British, Chinese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and various Latin accents. I have gotten good at it and sometimes am called on to translate one accent to another for the benefit of our diverse gatherings.That being said, sometimes the filter does not work as well as it should, sort of like the word recognition program needs tweaking.  

Sometimes I can blame the misunderstandings on toddler speak, for example:
"He has a bag eye."                             (He is a bad guy.)
"Daddy, Cam eye have a gun?"           (Daddy, can I have some gum?)
"My wand duh no men."                      (I want some ramen.)

 Other times what I think I hear is plainly inexplicable:
"The green plate is alert."                    (We are going to be late to church!)
 "This puddle pizza wuzzle fit!"          (This puzzle piece does not fit.)

My hands down favorite however was:
"I sh** on France!"                              (I ripped my pants)

My wife says I need to have my hearing checked, but all I hear is; "Unique calves earring stacks." I think she wants me to get something from the dairy store, but I just do not know what.