The Slice: Behind every muffled noise is a voice to be misunderstood

Here’s how to drive someone crazy.

Wait until the individual is standing beneath a loud bathroom fan. Then say something to him or her from an adjacent room.

Your hapless victim will vaguely perceive a voice and perhaps even discern his or her own name being uttered. But beyond that, everything will sound muffled, drowned out as it is by the sound of the fan.

“Huh? What?”

Another good trick is to wait until the person you’re nudging toward insanity is standing next to a churning dishwasher. Then ask a question.

Because the appliance makes so much noise, whatever is said will wind up sounding like “I’m donating your work slacks to Pantless in Spokane. OK?”

There are lots of other tactics, of course.

You can wait until the target of your diabolical mind game is sitting next to a whirring space heater before calling from another room, “George Clooney is standing on the porch of the house next door.”

Due to the heater noise, that will sound as if you said, “George Clooney is standing on the porch of the house next door.”

Other maddening tactics include calling out something to a person standing close to a barking dog or speaking softly to someone holding a screaming baby.

“All right to sign us up for salsa dance classes?”

“What? Can’t hear you.”

“Great! This will be fun.”

Slice answers: “My college roommate and now best friend has the same name as me, although she spells it differently,” wrote Bekki Sherwood of Spokane. “We went to CWU back the ’70s and had some confusing times when friends would call or ask about us. We both had the same name, red hair, and were preachers’ kids.”

And then, in another matter, there was this from a reader whose name I’ll keep to myself. “We have people on three sides of us in Otis Orchards that ignore all burning bans and, by the smell of their smoke, extract heat out of anything that will burn, smolder or melt.”

Today’s Slice question: How would “What would Idaho do?” work as guidance?