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Written by F. Lawrence Caslin
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Wednesday, 30 January 2008 |
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 I talked with this guy on the phone today. He stutters. Real bad. That's not the worst of it, though, English is his second language. Imagine that.
No, really. Can you imagine that?
First of all, trying to understand a stutterer is difficult. A stutterer with an accent is worse. When the accent is foreign and clipped and the English is bad and you're talking over a cell phone, deciphering words is downright impossible.
To make sure I got it all right, I repeated back what he said (in good English) no less than ten times before he was able to say, "Yes, that is it."
I'm not kidding. Ten times.
And this was after concentrating so hard it gave me gas. Again, I'm not kidding. I sat there, on the phone, getting more bloated by the second, trying to figure out what this guy was saying. I felt like a sit-com.
By the time I hung up, I had a cauliflower ear and a buddha belly.
I was so elated that we'd finally reached a mutual agreement, that I passed the gas and sprayed some Binaca to cover it up. It was truly a euphoric moment.
Of course, I was in a Taco Bell and had just finished a couple of bean burritos and tacos. So the gas could've been from them.
Maybe.
I'm going to stick to my concentration story, though. It's funnier that way. |