Like a scene from a comedy film
One thing that I was worried might get me in trouble here at the parish (in Mexico) is the fact that I’ve been reading the gospel and concelebrating (with my own part of the Eucharistic prayer). You see, I can practice these ahead of time, so I actually sound pretty good in Spanish. Unfortunately, this also gives people the impression I can actually *speak* the language, rather than just read it.
So after mass one elderly lady come to me, asking me for prayers for… well, to be honest, I have no idea. None whatsoever. She was speaking softly, I guess so that no one would hear her request, and swallowing some of her syllables, so I got about 5% of what she said.
So I (in Spanish) told her that I didn’t speak all that much Spanish, and asked her to repeat herself. But she began to offer replies that made absolutely no sense. It was like she hadn’t understood me at all, but was just faking that she had.
It was then I realised that she was hard of hearing!
So I began faking that I understood her, as she faked understanding me. It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision, but what else could I do? I couldn’t just walk away, and she seemed happy to be speaking with me. Well, to me. Well, at me. You get the picture. The bottom line is that there was a lot of head-nodding and hand-holding on my part, accompanied by can only have been a very strange exchange. I can only imagine what we must have sounded like to an eavesdropper! 
In the end I blessed her, and she left contented. Not knowing what I should be praying for, I just offered it up to the Lord, saying “Lord, you know what she was talking about. Your will be done.” Which is pretty much what I might have prayed had I understood her in the first place.