Listening Checks

I sometimes feel that there should be a required course in school called “Listening Checks”. Someone just said something important, and I asked someone to write it down for me, so I could quote it, and the notes didn’t even come back as a quote.

I was having a vehement discussion with someone on the phone awhile back, and their negative statements led me to ask them if they wanted me to erase their phone number from my contacts so I wouldn’t accidentally call them again, since they had said they didn’t want me bothering them again. This came back in an e-mail to me that I was erasing their phone number from my contacts because I never wanted to talk to them again.

People don’t pay enough attention to precise wordings, and when a paraphrase is paraphased enough times, one gets a weird memory, but seldom reality. Something like “Google Translates Sings”