One of the things that give me the biggest laughs is miscommunications – those times when people don’t hear the right words and an Abbott and Costello-like conversation takes place.

  Years ago, my mom was making a flight reservation for a family member named Philip. 

The conversation went like this—

  “The name of the passenger?”  

  “Philip. One ‘l’,” my mom replied, indicating the name had only one “l” in the spelling. 

  “OK,” the voice on the other end said.  “What was that name again?” 

  “Philip,” Mom said. “One ‘l’.” 

  “Right. Would you spell that?” 

  And so my mother spelled it out.  “P-h-i-l-i-p.” 

  “No, I meant the other name,” the woman said. 

  My mom was baffled because she had only given one name – Philip – with one ‘l’. 

  “What other name? I only gave you one name,” Mom said. 

  “No. You said another name,” the woman insisted. 

  “I said Philip –– with one ‘l’,” Mom replied. 

  “Yes! That’s it!  Wonelle,” the woman said. 

  That became a joke in our family for a long time. 

 The result of another miscommunication became a standard catchphrase in our house and it endures today. It has even come to mean several things, including “The table is wobbly” or “Didn’t you understand me?” 

  The catchphrase is “You’re gonna put a chicken under the table?” 

  I was in fifth grade and we had gone out to dinner. A little old man was sitting at a wobbly table by himself. We watched him jiggle the little round table this way and that way, looking for a way to stabilize it. He looked under the table and determined the pedestal was not level. 

  As a busboy was walking past with his arms full of dishes, the old man caught his attention. 

  The busboy, with an armload of dishes, listened patiently to the old man’s dilemma and said, “I’ll be right back. I have to take these dishes in the kitchen.” 

  Somehow, the elderly man heard a remarkably different solution to his problem. 

  “You’re going to do what? You’re going to put a chicken under the table?” the old man exclaimed. 

  Now, all these years later, if my mom and I don’t understand one another, one of us will say, “What?  You’re going to put a chicken under the table?” 

  And speaking of elderly gents, there was another time I was talking to my neighbors. One of them was an elderly man with hearing loss. He was supposed to wear a hearing aid, but in the course of our conversation and his “chicken under the table” interjections, it was clear he wasn’t wearing it. Finally, the other neighbor asked, “Frank, are you wearing your hearing aid?” 

  Very indignantly and loudly, Frank replied, “No, I don’t have to urinate!” 

  Through miscommunication, I found out Taylor Rentals does not rent X-rated videos. Not that I asked and not that I was looking for them, but the Maine accent led to a miscommunication.

  We had just purchased a barbecue grill at Wal-Mart. On the way home, we decided to stop at Taylor Rentals to fill the propane tank. We had to open the big cardboard box the grill came in to get to the tank. 

  After the tank was filled, I asked the guy at the counter for a strip of tape to reseal the box.

  “Do you have a strip of tape?” I asked him. 

  He looked at me for a moment. He squinted his eyes and cocked his head. Obviously, he was confused. 

  “We don’t sell those here,” he said indignantly.

  “A strip of tape,” I repeated.  “A piece of tape to close up the box.” 

  “Oh! I thought you said a strippah tape,” he explained through his laughter – and with his Maine accent. 

                                                                  – Renee Worthing