It's salt for veal

I have had my hearing tested. That's not the problem. The problem is that my brain likes puns and word play more than it likes reality. I'm convinced of this. Unfortunately, as funny as mishearing things can be, it really can cause problems when ones spouse is trying to communicate and ones brain is either not perceiving the input, or misprocessing it into something meaningless or downright surreal. Like if someone whispers to you that there's a terrorist aboard your airplane and you hear "there's an herbalist playing Mah Jong." Or vice versa. The implications can be profoundly negative.

I've been told that, basically, my problem is lack of attention. I admit there's a certain distractedness to my life...sure. Maybe more than most. If I'd gone through the school system in recent decades, as opposed to not-so-recent decades, I would almost certainly have been given some clinical diagnosis and put on pills aimed at making me a better (or at least less disruptive) student.

Fact is, though, I made it through just fine. I managed to get a Ph.D. eventually, so whatever my problem is, it must not be too debilitating. Or it's an advantage in later stages.

But, you know, I do dislike the aspect of this "condition" that makes it so easy to hurt the feelings of people I care about. I mistake an order at the drive-through, or don't hear when someone asks me to bring her something as long as I'm going into the kitchen anyway. It's not intentional that I screw these things up, I just don't hear them. Or hear them wrongly.

And I don't really have age as an excuse. I've been this way my whole life.

I don't really know how to fix it either. I've thought about it a lot. I could, for example, try to focus VERY HARD on whatever someone is saying to me, but sometimes I just don't know they're talking to me, so it's hard to orient to one particular stimulus, out of many, and recognize it as the important one at that moment.

Now, granted, sometimes this problem occurs in the middle of a conversation, or right after I've asked someone a question, and for that there really is no good excuse. I should be able to attend to the ongoing stream of one-on-one conversation. But something else intrudes. The brain is processing your utterances into puns or malaprops and then it's enjoying a good laugh.

My wife alternates between being annoyed at this stuff and thinking that it's all trivial.

To which I say "It's salt for veal?" what's that supposed to mean? You hate veal!