What you see is what you get

There’s a saying, “What you see is what you get”, but do we always see correctly?

We’ve had rats in our house recently; one or even two woodland rats, and they are very big! Our house is in a beautiful part of Osona, among forests, cliffs, hills, mountains and streams. There’s an ancient Medieval path, which was once a commercial route for carts and mercaders. Napoleon’s troops even came this way more than two centuries ago. More recently, during the Civil War, the path was used by men escaping into the Pyrenees. Right! Back to the rats! In fact, back to yesterday...

I was in bed hoping for a nice morning cup of tea. A humane rat trap had been placed strategically in the kitchen the previous night, with a succulent piece of cheese to tempt the rat. When you catch one, you drive the poor soul miles away and hope he doesn’t know the way back! I called downstairs to my daughter:

“Any luck?”

“Yes,” she answered. “One or two.”

“Hurray!” I replied. I got dressed and came downstairs. “Hurray!” I repeated.

“What for?” she said.

“Because we’ve captured the rats!”

She laughed. “What are you talking about? I never said anything of the sort!”

“But I heard you!”

“No you didn’t.”

“I’m sure I did!”

I’m a little ’hard of hearing’ as they say.

“You heard what you wanted to hear, Mum!” she chuckled. “A case of wishful hearing!”

Dear readers, isn’t that true? That we often hear what we want to hear and see what we want to see? I rest my case. And we’ve still got the rats. Some political rats also only see and hear what they want!