I'm a seasoned citizen, and I can tell you that it's very difficult to track with a conversation if the other person is a fast talker. I couldn't hold a convo with Ben Shapiro if my life depended on it! I've been known to interject, "Hold on a damned minute, I can't listen as fast as you're talking!" Slow down, enunciate carefully, maybe even kick up the volume slightly. At the start of a convo it's like my brain needs a couple seconds to get itself properly focused, so I'm playing catch up from the jump! My wife has a behavior that messes me up- at the end of whatever she is saying, her volume drops intil it becomes unintelligible, and I have to ask her to repeat, which becomes frustrating for her. I also have tinitus in a major way, and that doesn't help either.