Fool Hand Luke

 

What we have here is a failure to enunciate. I see it all the time. Actually, I hear it all the time. Or really, I don’t hear it all the time, and that’s precisely the problem most of the time. Mumbling, that low pitch hardboiled-egg-mouthing of each and every syllable, has reached epidemic proportions in many portions of the country. 

It’s hard to say why this is the case. I tend to put the blame on hard candy and the universal affinity for texting. When it comes to something like LOL, do you say “Lowell” like the forgotten textile town located at the great confluence of the Merrimack and Concord Rivers, the very same home of that boxer Monsieur Bale starved himself in order to win some little gold statue? Or, do you laugh out loud, wildly guffawing until the tears run down your face and ribbons of mucus cover your cheeks? Me? I wouldn’t know. There’s no manual on text etiquette, at least not one I’d take seriously.

So people mumble. They pick the first “t” out of interesting like a fresh curl sinking ever deeper into their hearty bowl of steaming chowder before it settles on a final, creamy resting place. They drop the final two letters of “God,” turning it into “gah” the sort of guttural utterance you can imagine someone saying during a physical. “Now open wide and say 'gahhhh'.”

They ask for a can of “Pep” in between corn dogs and stuffed animals, as if the good Doctor Pepper attended 7 years of soda medical school incurring massive coin debt, spent 5 more years as a vending machine resident, and another decade running the only fully carbonated ER in the country, only now to be disrespected by a careless fool, too parched to speak straight. As Pepper always says, “Mr. Pibb flunked the MCATs and I aced them. And yet, despite that huge intellectual gulf, we’re mistaken for each other on a daily basis. Imagine if Babe Ruth had to contend with people thinking he was a candy bar or worse, George W. Bush fending off those who wanted to know what Moses was saying to that burning boxwood all those years ago.”

There are exceptional mumblers who end up achieving great things, staring in big budget movies, running small dictatorships, or polishing the steel on an expensive espresso maker. But they are exactly that, exceptions. Most people need to be heard to be understood. Speak up, would you?