I used to have a student in my class who was famous for hearing things that were never said.

For instance, I would say something like, ‘Okay, everyone, take out your looseleaf for a spelling quiz,” and she would say, “What? The whole building’s on fire?”

I know – it wasn’t even remotely like anything I’d said. And, of course, it still made me want to laugh, because the look on her face was so serious.

But back to me. I do things like that all the time now – I call it Sharlene syndrome (named after the aforementioned ex-student) Except that what I hear really sounds like what’s being said. Here’s my example. This morning, the husband’s watching the Food Network (and hopefully taking notes on things he’s going to cook for me when he returns from upteenth business trip late next week.) And I turn to him and say, “Did they just say: Coming up today, Terrorist Secrets?”

The husband is, of course, extremely used to this by now. Without missing a beat, he says, “Yes. The terrorist population has gotten so large, Food Network decided to create an entire hour based on their cooking secrets.”

Hey, maybe I didn’t hear it wrong after all. Or maybe I’ve been writing milrom for way too long.

After checking the screen, I saw that the Food Network is doing a show called Sara’s Secrets, not Terrorist Secrets.

But it’s like the whole song lyric thing, when you discover after years of singing something a certain way that you’ve gotten the words horribly wrong. I had a friend who swore that the song, Big Old Jet Airliner, was really Big Old Chad Had a Rhino.

It’s completely ruined the song for me, since that’s all I can think of when I listen to it now.

Steph T.