On Hearing The Wrong Words

 I recently read an amusing story about someone who spent most of his youth under the impression that the quote "Knowledge is power" was the first half of a paired concept with France is bacon being the appropriate follow up. Two concepts? Or, the second supports and explains the first half? Hearing it allowed for a confusion that was only remedied, as the story went, when finally it was seen written out.

"Knowledge is power"- Francis Bacon.

I suspect we have all done that. I know I have. Song lyrics come to mind. There was a particular section of the Elton John Rocket Man song that I simply could not hear correctly and thus invented words that may have worked for the situation. Alas, I eventually found the actual lyric. It must be a common human experience, I believe.

So common it turns out that there are actually names for various types of this mistake. I am tempted to write 'click hear' as I link to an entertaining article which explains. Instead I'll place it after this paragraph without the trite spelling. Try it.

CLICK HERE

And, add to your vocabulary these words:

Mondegreen

Eggcorn

Oronym

The McGurk Effect

And with that I say, chow!

Years go by faster now

 I haven't been active here for quite some time. March 2021? I would explain my absence as a symptom of disbelieving I have an impact. Or, I might say I would find anything I might say in effective. And, if you did not respond, at least in your own mind, that I seem to have repeated myself we should both feel a sense of loss.

Speaking of loss. In this past year my baby sister died. Though she was sixty, she will forever be our kid sister. And, I fear that I will always wonder if there was anything I could have done to make her life worth living for so many years longer. She didn't technically commit suicide, as my previous sentence may suggest, but, she lost the will to keep herself alive and moving forward.

That she and I had not been talking, my choice, mostly, increases my desire to resolve whether I could have helped. Without getting into the details, my answer keeps coming back, no. Yet, that question, and the hurt of losing her remains. 

I watched her tumbled down a set of stairs as an infant. I alone saw her race around a corner and launch down the stairs. She was not yet walking and instead had a cart she sat it in with four wheels. We had a name for it once, scooter? No. Anyway, she raced about in this thing propelling herself with her feet. I was near the doorway to the staircase when suddenly she appeared from the hallway and took a u-turn into the stairwell. I tried to grab her. Even to me at seven years old it was obvious that she was in immediate danger. I had to watch as she tumbled head over heels all the way to the bottom where she smacked the floor and wasn't moving. I was calling for help and remember being afraid that she was dead. I insisted on going with them to the doctor where she was found to be uninjured. Nothing broken. I don't even remember any contusions. I wonder now if that event colored how I viewed her the rest of her life. Did I hold a sense of needing to protect her to compensate for what I couldn't do then. Catch her.

Am I doing it again now? Thinking I should have caught her?