Is this what Deaner was talking about?

I normally have pretty good hearing. In fact, there have been times when I have amazed people by my abilities. For example, a few summers ago a friend and I were on a collecting trip and one night as we sat up talking I told him to be quiet and to go check his mist net because I was pretty sure he'd just caught a bat. We were sitting about 30 meters from the net. He got up, checked the net, and came back with a bat. He asked me how on earth I knew and I told him that I'd heard it fly into the net. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this stuff, a bat flying into a mist net is as quiet as it sounds.

Unfortunately, my ability to hear is limited in some cases. My poor hearing manifests itself most when I'm trying to listen to certain people speak. As this semester began I asked one of my students for her name because it wasn't on my roster.

Her: *muttering something unintelligible*
Me: I'm sorry. I didn't catch that.
Her: *muttering something unintelligible (again!)*
Me (trying not to ask again because I don't want to look like a dumb ass): Ok, I'm not going to be able to spell that, so could I have you write it down for me?

She wrote it down, and then the unintelligible muttering made sense, but not until then.

This inability to hear seems to be a recurring theme for me. For some reason, I have difficulty deciphering words spoken with various accents. The reason for that is probably the fact that I didn't grow up in the world's most culturally diverse place and didn't experience too many accents. Either that, or I'm subconsciously racist. I'm pretty sure it's the former.

For another example, flash back to the same collecting trip mentioned earlier: My friend and I had been out for about a week, and were in desperate need of a shower. We had finished netting bats, and were on the way to my collecting sites to go after fish. We decided it would be a good time to get a motel room since we were just driving and didn't have to be anywhere specific that night. We drove to a motel in a small town. My friend told me to run in and ask how much a room would cost, so I did. There was an older Indian man behind the counter.

Me: How much for a room? There are two of us.
Man: Porty-Pai-o.
Me: I'm sorry?
Man: Porty-Pai-o.
Me: *shaking head* I still didn't get that.
Man: I write it.

He then wrote $45 on a piece of paper.

Enlightened, I returned to the truck.

Friend: How much did he say?
Me: Porty-pai-o
Friend: Huh?
Me: Porty-pai-o
Friend: I don't know what that means.
Me: Apparently it means forty-five.

We decided Porty-pai-o was a fair price.