Wholly Daunserly Leprechauns ... With Chest Hair

Several years ago I read an essay by author Marialisa Calta who, as a little girl, loved to hear our National Anthem sung. She was particularly intrigued by a word in the second bar of the song. Since she had not noticed the word being used commonly in conversation, she assumed it was a very special word reserved for the description of an extremely beautiful, shimmering light. She repeated the lovely word over and over again in her mind: "daunserly." Although she was careful never to use the word out loud, on one delicious summer day when her family visited the beach she was overcome by the sunlight dancing diamond-like on the water. Before she knew it she had blurted it out: "It’s just ... daunserly!" Her mother broke it to Marialisa (gently, I hope) that her beautiful "word" was really two common words  -- "dawn’s early."  Long after she knew that her precious word was not really a word at all, she still could not help but think of certain kinds of bright, sparkling, dancing light as "daunserly."

I'm rather famous for hearing something different than what was actually said. I'm, like, the personification of Chinese telephone, the game in which a statement is made in the ear of one person and is repeated over and over to several more people and comes out of the mouth of the person at the end of the line as a completely unrelated concept. Except with me, you only have to say it once and I will instantly verbalize the totally unrelated concept. This comes easily to me! I take out the middle man, as it were. Unless the middle man happens to be Johnny Depp, in which case we'll leave him right where he is!

The other day I saw a commercial for a new product called Oreo Cakesters (remind me to get a box of those). A bunch of kids are in the lunchroom at school and little Billy brings some Cakesters out of his lunchbox. The kid across the table whispers to the one beside him that Billy has Cakesters in his lunch. The great news travels down the table until the last kid asks, incredulous: "Billy has chest hair?" That's what I'm talking about! I could have said that.

In church some time ago I was listening attentively (I thought) to the sermon, when to my great surprise I heard the preacher mention something about the "children of leprechauns." I tried to look pious as I pondered the spiritual significance of offspring of little green mythical creatures, but rather than try to find chapter and verse all by me onesie, in the end I decided to keep my concerns to myself until I could ask my husband what the preacher could have meant. On the way home I hazarded the question and was met with the husbandly look I had anticipated and dreaded: the Have You Finally Gone Completely And Permanently Out Of Your Mind? look ... followed by this simple explanation: "He said 'children of leper colonies,' dear." Now, I wasn't sure I knew leper colonies had children either, but it made more sense than leprechauns! It ain't easy being green ...

Today I was in a deposition, dutifully keeping the record as always, when the man being deposed was asked whether he had any hobbies. He replied that his only hobby was his family, something that I found rather sweet. His wife was sitting there listening so maybe that's why he said that, but I digress ... at any rate, when the deposition had concluded I asked the man's lawyer if her client would be reading and signing (more on that in a moment). Ms. Lawyer replied that she might go ahead and advise him to read because she wasn't sure I had caught it when he talked about the Family of Muhabies. Now, I can tell you right now my eyes got wide and my mouth fell open (okay, it was probably already open but it opened more), and before I could catch myself I repeated (loudly) "WHAT FAMILY OF MUHABIES?" Because you see, I knew he had mentioned no such thing but that WAS what Ms. Lawyer had said ... right? Wrong. She had said (as she was kind enough to clarify as I busied myself removing my foot from my mouth) that his "family was his hobby" ... which of course I knew already! Luckily she's super-nice and just thinks I'm a dope but not necessarily incompetent! I'm good wiv it! I will live to report in this town again.

Reading and signing, by the way, is the right of every person I place under oath in a deposition setting. Once the depo has wrapped up and we all go our separate ways, I have two weeks to type up a transcript of every word that was said on the record. The agency I work for then puts the transcript in booklet form and, unless the deponent has waived his right to read and sign, they send a copy to the deposed person and give them a chance to read and "sign off" on it. A page is provided where they can write any instance where they think they said something different to what I typed. It's called an "errata" sheet. Of course none of my deponents ever have cause to use it! HAHA! My errata sheets are devoid of errata.

But don't you wish you could read a transcript of everything people thought you said in a given day, and had the opportunity to go back and correct it and explain yourself and "set the record straight"? But then again maybe it's best not to know what people thought we said ... or meant! HAHA! We might be shocked silent if we knew. Which in some cases may not be a bad thing. I will thank you not to snicker.

Once when I was a little girl, I was piled up in Mama's bed with her and my big sister Jan, and we were reading (our main entertainment as children when we were not fighting). I think I was in fourth or fifth grade. Jan was way bigger and smarter than me so I was loathe to read in front of her, but this night I got carried away in the excitement and was reading from my History book or something. I came across a word which I had loved for some time but never had occasion to read out loud, and so I said it with great fervor because I relished its plummy sound: "wholly." Except when I said it, it rhymed with "trolley" instead of sounding just like "holy." Need I describe the look on my sister's face and her subsequent humiliation of me? I think I clammed up for all of, like, ten seconds after that.

Today after my depo I went to Wholly-World for a few groceries, then on to the nail salon for my manicure. My friend Rose does my nails and while she does I watch the big flat-screen TV embedded in the wall behind her. It always has closed-captioning activated, which fascinates me because of the way the words appearing in the black fields at the bottom of the screen often don't match what was actually said. Today it was particularly entertaining. A news item about a too-salty hamburger served to an unfortunate police officer at McDonald's in Georgia yielded this gem: the burger has been sent for analysis to the Swoonz Bureau of Investigation. Joonie, hope you're doing well down there in Swoonz, darling!

Later when the news turned to a segment about an 11-year-old girl who was mauled by pit bull mixes roaming her neighborhood a week or so ago, it said she had been required to spend some time in a hyperbaric chamber because of the onset of treasure-eating disease. Could they have meant flesh-eating? Ya think? Then it said that, despite the attacks, the little girl was undeterred from her already-chosen career field: she wants to be a veteran. You know! An animal doctor!

Another informative news item about the dietetic benefits of reaching for blue corn chips (as opposed to white or yellow), claimed it was because they have a lower "guy seem mick" index. If Guy seems to be Mick, y'all, give him some blue corn chips, 'k? His blood sugar will stabilize in no time! Then throw him a Cakester.

Clearly the National Captioning Institute has some work to do on its voice-recognition software ... it can't be the (trained professional) human captioners making those mistakes, can it? Can it?

I'm glad I was so busy today because, since 2001, I always feel sad on this day. On September 11, 2001, my husband was in Washington, D.C., for a conference. He saw firsthand the smoke billowing from the Pentagon. He still cannot talk about it without getting emotional. I sat for the entire day, slack-jawed with stunned disbelief, before my television set as we were shown again and again, via instant replay, exactly what terrorism looks like. As the airplanes struck the tall, proud skyscrapers, tears came to my eyes not only for the people whose lives were surely lost or forever altered, but for the buildings themselves, once the crown jewel of the quintessential American city. I was reminded of my favorite verse of "America the Beautiful":

O beautiful for patriot dream/That sees beyond the years/Thine alabaster cities gleam/Undimmed by human tears!

Our family visited New York City on July 4, 1996. The day was fickle, cold and rainy, and we shivered while waiting for the ferry to take us to visit the Statue of Liberty. By the time we reached Liberty Island, the sun had come out and the gloomy day had become fair. The sight of the World Trade Center towers, immense and luminous against the backdrop of lower Manhattan, was breathtaking. I remember thinking, "That is a daunserly sight!"

How I wish we could go back to before it happened and tell the story differently. That is, make it so that there is no story to tell and re-tell of the day our towers crumbled and some last vestige of innocence was lost. Like reading what purports to be the record and saying "That's not how it happened at all! You imagined all of it!" And then clicking that "undo" button at the top of the screen and deleting the text. Letting that beautiful September day slide from the calendar without so much as a whisper of the violent, untimely deaths of thousands of Americans at the hands of terrorists who hate us.

How I wish that on that sad day, I could have misheard and misunderstood. Gotten it all wrong. Dreamt it or fabricated it or exaggerated it or completely made it up just to see how morbid I could be, like writing a tawdry melodrama that belongs in the trashcan. But I didn't and you didn't, and we can't go back. September 11 is part of us now. We heard right the first time. God Bless America.