Say what?!

As I'm sat where with Paul watching the F1 it suddenly dawned on me how little (pretty much none!) of the commentary I can actually hear. It got me thinking that the Grand Prix is a really good metaphor of the life of someone who is hard of hearing. The cars being the background noise and the commentary the everyday conversation. Iv been watching for about 15 minutes and can honestly say that I haven't heard a full sentence clearly so far! As anyone who is hard of hearing or suffers with single sided deafness will know, we cant differentiate between what is supposed to be background noise and the sound of someone who could be talking right at you!

Im also aware that my brain likes to fill in the blanks and create sentences for me without me even knowing it. This is true of so many peoples day to day lives, at work, home, gym, social lives, the list is endless. I cant even count the amount of times in an average week that I don't hear the end of someones sentence because they walk in to another room while talking, lower their voice or turn their head away while talking to me. It makes for some really odd (and also funny!) sentences where I have a little chuckle to myself and carry on with the task in hand.

Turns out that "filling in the blanks" is an actual thing.....its called oronyms, which are sequences of words and sounds that sound similar to each other. There is a region of our brains called the angular gyrus that cleverly uses all of a persons previous life knowledge to fill in gaps where necessary with predictable replacements. Some days I feel like I'm in a real life game of hangman trying to fill in the gaps and blanks to make someones sentence make sense!

Until next time...