Mix for 11/14/10 - Triumphant Beards
Every so often I catch myself speaking with some vague accent or other unusual verbal tics, often acquired from the people around me. Visiting relatives in Colorado, they accused me of having some slight Canadian slur distorting the pronunciation of my vowels, leaving me concerned about my appreciation for plaid-print. When I teach I tend to slow my speech to a crawl while raising the pitch of my voice, resulting in some awful stoner-vibes wafting from the beaches of Point Break. Students are often unprepared for the grand reveal of my actual lusty baritone, as I shout at them about how "Vanessa was riding her bicycle at 30mph for 13 minutes...." Those word problems can get intense. Or: I get pretty worked up when I read them.
As I write, I have a habit of letting my thoughts race ahead of my typing, which results in frequently forgotten particles, participles, and other mundane parts of speech. If my attention starts to lag, I'll begin to hear my internal voice echoing inside my head and I struggle to identify if it's actually a copy of my voice or something appropriated. Sometimes it possesses a subtle lisp, the same subtle lisp that once prevented me from ever saying "synthesizer" out loud when I was growing up. But I have no lisp today, and I haven't for years and years and years.
And it's this constantly shifting quality of voice that results in so much misunderstanding, as it seems to take some months or millennia of knowing me to determine whether I just told I joke. Many jokes have met many stern gazes and never did they find the happiness they deserved. So I find myself often speaking in grand hyperbole, loudly describing terrible absurdities thinking surely it's clear — I am joking now.
Instead I get asked if I need a hug.
Of course I need a hug.
2 comments:
After much turmoil, I have found the solution to your joke-telling dilemma: a laugh track. Download one onto your Ipod, take out the headphones and pump up the volume post-joke. Even folks in Colorado have seen "According to Jim" and will surely understand. Also use after you've thrown a pie in someone's face.
That's a teaching accessory I can stand behind.
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