Mumbles

Remember the Dick Tracy movie?

That flick came out when I was 17 years old, had Warren Beatty before he got all leathery and Madonna back when she was the subject of my dreams and not my nightmares.

It also had Mumbles - played by Dustin Hoffman - a gangster who no one could understand because of his tendency to...well, mumble everything he said. His speech was so garbled it was nearly incomprehensible.

Quite the looker, eh?

Now Mumbles works for me.

Not Dustin Hoffman, (if it was him I'd ask why he did Sphere) but a guy who I find I can't understand for the life of me.

Now, I'll be honest, my hearing isn't that great - according to the Wife, it's atrocious. (At least I think that was what she said.) Years of rockin' out to Hair Metal and following the rule of "If It's Too Loud, You're Too Old" has been detrimental. But I'm not taking the entire blame for not hearing ol' Mumbles - he has to take some of it when it sounds like he's trying to practice a ventriloquist act without the dummy.

I worked with Mumbles before, and even then his horrible speech patterns drove me nuts. But we worked a schedule that had us only working together occasionally, so I just faked like I understood what he was saying and left it at that.

But now it's different.

Now, we are working together practically every day - and while the work-related stuff he says is somewhat easy to understand and get the gist of even if I didn't hear it right, it's the other topics of conversation that get messed up.

I ask him how his weekend was, and his answer is unintelligible to me. He could have said he went out and drop-kicked puppies all weekend, and my answer is "Sweet- I'd like to try that sometime."

As you can see, it leads to some puzzled looks.

But now I'm in a conundrum: Do I admit that I've been unable to understand what he's been saying all this time and ask him to speak clearly, (thus showing that I've been half-assing every conversation we've ever had) or do I just continue with what I've been doing and hope he never catches on?

As you can see, the choice is more troubling than Warren and Madonna's STD results after that movie.









Later.