Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker cichy_polak: "What are some misheard word moments you've recently had that made you giggle? For example, there are these containers that bartenders often use called Store 'N Pour containers, but I always heard it as 'Storm Pours.' I never questioned it. Just sounded like a brand name choice. I only last week discovered what it actually was."

[Deaf readers who may not have had this exact experience are welcome to reinterpret the question as appropriate, e.g. What idiom completely flummoxed you the first time you encountered it?]

Gosh, this happens to me all the time, but of course I can't think of a single recent instance, now that I have to come up with one, lol!

So I'll just repeat old examples I've shared before:

1) When I was really little, I thought matzo ball soup was actually called mothball soup. I didn't understand why anyone would want to eat it. (I now love matzo ball soup, btw.)

2) The Lutheran Confession of Sins and Absolution is:

"O almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended Thee and justly deserved Thy temporal and eternal punishment. But I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them; and I pray Thee of Thy boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful, being."

Every week this is intoned by the whole congregation during the service. (To this day, I remember exactly where the "breath breaks" were: "O almighty God, merciful Father (breathe!), I, a poor miserable sinner (breathe!)…") I had it memorized before I could read it.

For many years, I wondered why we were all confessing that we were "hardly" sorry for our sins.

Funnily enough, I know of at least one other person with whom I grew up who thought the same thing, and I've met two Lutherans since who laughed with recognition when I shared that story.