Playing Fair and Being Kind

I have been doing a lot of primary research online and some of it includes looking up word meanings and pronunciation. I have become something of a word-smith. There are words that I never fully understood the derivation of. It has been fun as well as edifying. Here is a story that goes into one of my adventures to do with saying certain words.

TEMP WORKER
I had a job offer the other day. The online dictionaries hire people with pleasant voices to be their “pronouncer” for words that are posted in response to search engine inquiries. I’ve been told that I have a good reading voice by an educated friend of mine. She likes my mid-Atlantic drawl. I spent a lot of time in Tidewater, Virginia which is on the boarder with North Carolina. I was in the Navy and many of my shipmates were from south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

While on that ship I worked as a mess cook for Jim Lowery the chief cook. He was from Alabama I think and he and I had a lot of difficulty understanding each other’s regional dialect. I was from Boston. By the time he’d get something he needed to say out of his mouth I could have recited the words to the national anthem.

I remember Lowery telling me that there were “fruit pahs” up on the pier waiting to be brought aboard. I was to retrieve them. They were for dessert. That was the first I ever heard that term. I’ve only known “pie” for desert up until then. Later I became quite able to understand and even repeat some of his dialect. I incorporated fruit pah into my vocabulary within a few days. In fact, fruit pah is pronounced as one word; fruitpah with a very soft ‘t’. Fruit pahs had things like peaches in them. We ate a lot of fruit pah.

Anyway, I was being hired to be a word pronouncer for one of the bigger dictionary word online sites. I understood that I was to be in the office before 10 A.M. ready to repeat words back to the manager. I was to speak into a microphone that hung about my neck. They instructed me to make sure that my voice was lubricated sufficiently. I was to arise early enough to have the gruff gone from my voice by ‘show time’.

The morning of my first day at work I arose at my usual time of six o’clock and began my usual routine of coffee and slowly waking up by playing solitaire on my laptop. I could get a few games in with one large cup of coffee. I changed my habit a little bit. I was feeling a little anxious about being able to pronounce clearly and loudly enough. We didn’t bother with any training sessions. I guess they just assumed from the interview that my delightful mid-Atlantic accent was going to be a dream come true for them. To ensure that I was not only lubricated with dark roast coffee I got out the Jameson’s Irish whiskey bottle and poured a shot for myself. Right away I felt better. I felt like a new man.

I had another cup of dark roast and the old vocal cords were sweetening. I played another game of solitaire and deeply hummed a sexy rendition of “Where the Blue of the Night meets the Gold of the Day”. Jesus! Bing had nothing on me! The ‘new man’ finished his coffee and poured another shot of Jameson’s. I finished dressing and drove the ten minutes to the online dictionary office. I was ready!

The sound technician was a woman I had met briefly at the interview. We prepared ourselves in the recording room. She attached the small microphone around my neck and clipped it to my t-shirt that read “Peace” in several languages. She had me sit on one side of a conference table while she stationed herself on the opposite side with her list of words that I was going to say clearly into my microphone. I waited anxiously. She looked at her list and then at me. She looked like she smelled something and her eyes squinted just a little. She clearly said what I thought was my first word.

“Fuck!” she muttered.

Wait…what the hell is this? Her pronunciation was atrocious! Plus, I was confused. Did she intend that I say “Fuck”? I was totally caught off guard. My face apparently displayed my muddled and disorganized state. Her expression said volumes.

“Fuck?”, I repeated.

“Fuuuck”, she groaned.

I again said, “Fuck?”.

“Oh, fuuuuuuck…”, from her.

The Jameson’s was kicking in.

In my best mid-Atlantic-but-mostly-Jim Lowery-Alabama-speak I hollered, “Jesus-motherfuckin’-Christmas! FUCK!”

I repeated it for clarity. “FOO-UUUUCK!”

She got up and came around to my side of the table, unwrapped the microphone and I left.

She didn’t need to tell me anything. Apparently, I was fired.  

On the drive home I practiced a few other words in my sweet mid-Atlantic croon. “Fuck”. “Shit”. “Damn”. All those good ones.

Gentle George
22 September 2020