Lend me your selective ears
I wish I had the kind of selective hearing Newman has.
I am male and married so I have, of course, developed a form of selective hearing that is quite handy. Actually, my survival depends on it. Have you heard of the "plastic" brain? That is the term scientists use now to denote that our brains are changeable, no matter how old we are. We can "rewire" them. Well, if I paid attention to the billion conflicting messages coming at me all the time, this plastic brain of mine would melt quicker than the wicked witch of the west. I asked the contractor-to-the-Gods Mike Holmes to rewire me but still some melting has occurred. This failure did not appear on his show. Figures.
So my selective hearing is crucial and is a great time saver too. When my wife gets home and asks how my day was, what I hear is, "Why does our lawn look like a Kansas wheat field, why is there toast and peanut butter underneath the bed sheet and when are you gonna grow up?" So I get to these things right away. Don't tell her, but the first two aren't really that hard to deal with. The third is a bitc…kinda hard.
Each day I'm never quite sure what the 3 tasks are that are firmly imbedded in the words "how was your day." That keeps my brain nimble and me out of the garage. So with selective hearing and a finely tuned married brain I keep myself in pretty good shape.
But I want Newman's selective hearing. Or I should say, some of his selective hearing. Some of his adaptive hearing is of no use to me. For example, if he hears a squeak somewhere in the room, he is all over it. After many months of attacking him with my hair trimmer he has learned that this sound means danger, or a bad haircut. I think he even knows the particular painful scream I let out when I get the vet bill. This selective hearing does me no good.
But he is a master at tuning out some sounds that I desperately wish I could ignore. The other day a Justin Bieber song came on the radio. I studied Newman carefully. Not a twitch. No convulsing or chest pains. No doggie vomit. No trembling or expelling or imploding - no lions and tigers and bears. I'd say he wasn't even aware that Justin Bieber was burning the wires of my radio like the acid blood from the Alien creature.
It was a sight to behold. He displayed none of the symptoms I experience when Bieber belches with his band. Newman has developed a selective hearing I can only imagine having.
Please help me to develop this kind of hearing. Please Newman, lend me your selective ears.
P.S. See if you can spot the 3 references to The Wizard of Oz.
