No Matter How Loud and Clearly I Speak, Someone Always Says “Huh”

JBH Wonders, 12/2013

For over thirty years I worked in an office/factory environment and prior to that I’ve worked at other facilities that were moderately noisy. For most of my technical career I’ve worked around people with college or technical school degrees. So they were fairly intelligent folks I would guess. Rarely did I have to repeat myself and never heard that annoying (to me) euphemism “huh”. That “word” by the way does not appear in my Webster’s 1987 abridged dictionary nor a later 1995 edition.

My children often said “huh” to me when they were little. It was then a lack of focus or an issue of not paying attention I believe. They eventually learned that if Dad has to say the same thing for the third time it will be with a raised voice and they better get it this time. This taught them the fine art of actually listening when someone is speaking-especially to them. Or if they actually did not hear me they learned to say “what daddy?” or “pardon” in their later years.

These days I now hear “huh” more that I ever have. I have stood within three feet of someone and spoken to them while making eye contact and would still here “huh”. I have had to repeat myself up to two times after the initial “huh”.

Could it be that my hearing has improved with age and I am not speaking as loud as I believe I am? An improvement in hearing as we get older (any improvements actually) would be a blessing but this is not what normally happens. Am I speaking incoherently? I don’t believe so as I often make audio recorded notes to myself late in the evening. Often I am tired and I may have indulged in a beer or two. When these notes are reviewed the next morning, I have no problem understanding myself. So what is the problem?

Is it perhaps a loss of awareness do to distractions so that now it requires an attention getting starter word like “Hey, sup”, “Uhhhhhhh”, “Soooo”, etc. Is the dumbing down in government/public schools part of the cause of an automatic “huh” reflex?

Perhaps there is too much viewing of mindless TV programs which is causing a loss of intellect, and a loss of an intelligent automatic response to an audio stimulus from another living soul. Are visual distractions overriding the audio response mechanism? Is there a lack of focus and ‘knowing where you are” being promulgated by constant communication with someone else far away via “texting”, “iphoning”, etc? Or maybe the problem is simply an epidemic of earwax build up. (Hey I am no doctor but that sounded pretty good I think).

I did not do any research as to the origin of “huh”. Perhaps it is a grunt from “Ogg the caveman” handed down through the ages of man. Perhaps it is an acronym for “hearing under hooey” or haven’t understood honey.

Or perhaps I am becoming more soft spoken, no one is much interested in what I have to say therefore folks just try to ignore me.

Can you hear me now?