A good lesson learned in an unintended way.....

I can hear fine but my problem is that I don't always hear the right thing. Is that a contradiction? For example, one year my dad called me at work on my birthday, and I swear after we exchanged, "Hellos", he said, "Happy birthday!", after which I immediately said, "Thank you". Towards the end of the conversation I said something to the effect of, "Tonight for my birthday I'm going to go.........". My dad promptly said, "Oh! Today is your birthday? I totally forgot. I was only calling because I hadn't talked to you for awhile". One of my dads better qualities is his honesty. I would have been none the wiser had he not said he forgot my birthday since I did think I heard him wish me a happy one. So anyway, I was so expecting him to wish me a happy birthday that I heard the phantom words and even replied to them with a "thank you", which obviously my dad didn't hear right either because he would have been wondering why I was thanking him.
On to a more recent experience and the good lesson learned in an unintended way. A few months ago I was at a social event with a friend of mine where we only knew 2 of the 35 or so people there. Through the course of the evening, we kept being introduced to more people knowing full well we'd be lucky to match even 1 name to the appropriate face. This kind of became the evenings banter with everyone questioning how they were going to remember the names of everyone they were introduced to. I myself often forget a name immediately after the last sound of the name rolls off the persons tongue. Not good. So anyway, we had just been introduced to a few more people and I turned to my friend and once again asked her how in the world we could begin to remember anyone's name. She replied by saying, or so I thought she said, "You have to repeat it". That made perfect sense to me. If you repeat the person's name who was just introduced to you, there's a better chance you'll remember it. I then said to my friend, "That's right. You have to repeat it". She then looked at me kind of puzzled and said, "Did you hear what I just said?" I said, "Yes. You said you have to repeat the person's name (to help you remember it)". "No!", she said....... "I said, I have to pee again!"