Wednesday, 1/14

I’ve bitten my tongue and, as a result, can’t say certain letters. But that’s okay; it’s not like I have speak clearly for a living, or anything.

Oh, wait...

Shucks.

The latest entry in the never-ending parade of my own self-abuse came courtesy of dinner last night. As I am wont to do, I was chewing on whatever it was I was eating when I, uhm, missed the food and instead formed a nice little hole at the end of my tongue with what are apparently my vampire-like teeth. Sad to say, it’s something I do on occasion; after many decades of feeding myself you’d think I’d know what I’m doing, but on those occasions when I bite my tongue, apparently I don't.

Anyway, my tongue has started to heal like my tongue usually does. But because of the position of this bite--right on the lower left tip of my tongue--I’ve found myself with the inability to properly say a couple of letters, mostly notably “d” and “s”. Well, I shouldn’t say that I can’t properly say the letters; I can, but when I do, the bite that’s slowly healing on my tongue hits my teeth and sends spasms of pain throughout the rest of my mouth, and probably slows down the healing process, to boot.

I don’t know about you, but a lot of the words I say in the course of an average day contain either “d” or “s” or both, and it’s not like I could leave them out of my vocabulary. Well, I suppose I could leave all words that contain a “d” or an “s” out of my everyday speech patterns, but then I’d ended up mostly using words like “Tomato”, “Anxiety”, and “Iowa”, and if you think I’m occasionally incoherent to being with, imagine what I’d be like with a vocabulary that consisted mostly of words like “Tomato”, “Anxiety”, and “Iowa”.

Although it would be kind of an interesting mental exercise, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, my friend Deanna, upon hearing that I was having trouble talking, sent me a list of long songs that I could play on the air to avoid speaking. Let’s just say that I’ll deal with a little pain and forego some of the suggestions she made, including a 48 minute and 53 second version of Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” and a 22+ minute version of “Chariots of Fire”. I mean, it hurts me to say the letters “d” and “s”, but it would hurt you guys a lot more to sit through songs like that.

That’s okay; you can thank me later.

So if in the next couple of days you throw on your radio and I sound strange (well, okay, stranger than usual), know that it’s not the fault of either your ears or your radio. It’s my fault entirely, and because of that, you can rest assured--one of these years, I WILL learn how to eat. If nothing else, I’m sure my tongue would appreciate it.

(jim@wmqt.com)