Translation please?

We have a TV in our house.

We have this awesome TV. It's big, not really really big, but big. It's got a great picture, good color, and it's perfect for us. Our TV is old. It's really old in TV years which is equivalent to dog years I'm pretty sure. Since I'm not sure what our TV's exact birthdate is I couldn't tell you how old it is exactly, but for sake of not exposing our TV to utter embarrassment we'll just leave it's age a bit ambiguous.

Even though our TV is old it's basically awesome. My husband is especially fond of our TV, not because he likes watching TV, on the contrary, he actually watches almost no TV, but he is especially fond of this TV because, like all good bargain hunters, he got it for a steal. A couple summer's ago at the height of garage sale season here in Bend (which, for those of you who don't know, is the other summer past time in our fair city) our previous TV bit the dust. It went out quite dramatically one day. I'll spare you the details but it was ugly. Daniel, however, saw this as a Divine excuse, I mean opportunity, to go garage sale-ing. Off we go in our Volvo station wagon to hunt for the perfect TV. Our standards for  TV's aren't what most people  have as standards. It doesn't have to be big, or pretty. It doesn't have to mount on the wall or even have the right color picture. If it doesn't smoke when you turn it on, then it's the one for us. Most of all however, it must, must, must be cheap. That is the number one quality he was looking for in a TV.

After a little looking around, maybe 2 or 3 sales, we happened on one. There it sat. The biggest, ugliest TV I'd ever seen. It was a monster and heavy!!! When Daniel asked the magic words "how much do you want for the TV", he almost fell over when they said "Oh how about $7!". Like any good bargain hunter he never let his eyes betray his excitement, he just nodded and got in the car and we drove on. I'm wondering what in the world we are doing. He wanted to see if there was any better offer anywhere else. We drove to a couple other places, never found anything better, go figure. As we headed back to the place of destiny, he was praying the TV was still there, I was praying another bargain hunter had snatched it away. As we pulled up, he was delighted to see it sitting there.

It was quite a sight seeing the two of us wrestle that gigantic TV into our car, but like all good bargain hunters, you do whatever you can to make it fit. Fit it did, barely, and after shelling out an enormous amount of $7 we were the proud owners of a new TV. To his joy and my dismay, we got it home and it actually worked, an added bonus.

Now that our TV has been a part of our family for a while we are beginning to notice some of it's idiosyncrasies. My daughter has a musical playlist that we run through our Wii and she loves listening to all the princess songs from the Disney movies. Some of these movies have an automatic link to put up the words on the bottom of the screen so you can read the words as well as hear them. This is where the joy of our TV comes in. Our TV is so old that this feature was probably fairly new when they made our particular  model, so new that they hadn't worked out all the bugs and translating correctly wasn't a necessity, making for some hilarious bloopers.

As Gracie enjoyed Beauty and the Beasts song "Be our guest" the rest of us that can read were laughing at the translation. If you've enjoyed this movie you will know that the french candlestick sings this song. He's got a thick accent and if you aren't listening carefully you won't understand him. Well, our TV seemed to think it understood him perfectly and boldly declared the lyrics to us without even questioning their validity.

For instance - the song declares - "Be our guest, be our guest, put our service to the test"
TV translation - "Beef is laugh, dust is best, calling you to test."

As we laughed at the absurdity of many of the lyrics I realized a not so hilarious similarity between me and the TV.

You see, the TV was boldly proclaiming what it thought the song was saying. Many times I refuse to stop and really hear others. I choose to put on my translators and "hear" what I want to hear others saying. If they are saying something I don't necessarily want to hear I just switch on my translators and voila, instant relief as I enjoy what I want to hear instead of what is really being said.

I see this in my kids. This is one of the reasons it's so fun to hear a 2 year old sing a favorite song with their version of the lyrics. They are often silly and non-sensical, cute, worthy of recording, sending in to America's Funniest Videos, maybe even worth $10,000!! However, not so cute when you are 37, grown and fully capable of listening and understanding.

How often do we hear only what we want to hear and not what someone else is saying. I'm desperately desiring to be a better listener.

Adjusting my hearing today.