Have you ever been embarrassed by misunderstanding something somebody said?

It happened to me a few days ago.

I was on a public bus. I was bored, so I was playing Tetris on my cell phone. An elderly woman was sitting across from me, and I heard her ask, "Do you have a life?"

I guessed she was making a snide remark about my not having anything better to do on the bus than to play a silly little game on an electronic device, but I didn't dare use a snide response. So I just said, "Yes, I do."

Then she responded, "Where is it?"

I supposed that this was either an odd way to articulate her disbelief in my having a life, or some weird sort of philosophical catechism regarding life. I had trouble answering, but I said, "Uh ... that's a hard question to answer. It isn't a physical object of which you can pinpoint the location." I didn't say much more about it, because I didn't want to get into a religious discussion of the location of life with her.

Then she replied in the way I least expected, "Yeah, whatever. Can I borrow it for a sec?"

I thought it was extremely odd for her to ask to borrow my life. It also piqued my curiosity about her intentions. So I said, "Er ... how would you propose I do that?"

"Look, just give it to me, I'll use it for a little bit and give it back to you."

I figured that before she chanted some incantation directing spirits to temporarily donate my life, I would at least find out why she wanted my life. So I ask just that, "What do you want my life for?"

She gave me a puzzled look.

From our following discourse, which I do not remember very well, I found out that she was actually asking me if I had a cigarette lighter. ("Do you have a light?")

I can only imagine how odd my responses seemed to her.