Free Tongues

I spoonerize words all the time. All. The. Time. Good spoonerisms and bad. In my head. (I worderize spoons all the time. Tall. The Lime. Spoon Gooderisms band ad. Hin my ed.)

I was reading the above quote from Neven Mrgan's blog in the midst of a long week which turned into a long month which is still dragging on toward eternity. Ahem. The whole article got me thinking about a number of things, like the first time I heard the word "spoonerisms" and what a great-looking Tumblr page Neven has and how I should really get around to reading through his archives some day. (I went traipsing through the archives five minutes later.)

But the actual content, the story about how he has been intentionally spoonerizing words for years, has been stuck in my head all these long weeks. I just can't fathom someone who intentionally does what I try so hard not to do.

When I get really stressed or if I find myself surrounded by people who intimidate me or somehow make me nervous, I leak spoonerisms. They don't stay in my head for my own amusement. They spill out in awkward gushes in the middle of conversations, so my tongue tries to do a U-turn, and hi, is Rachel channeling demons? Maybe we should take our punch and cookies elsewhere.

It's one of the many things I had hoped to outgrow after childhood, but here I am at 26 and still unable to match syllables together in the right order. And even if I can get the words right, my brain starts jumbling up colloquialisms until I sound like a foreigner trying to repeat jokes I heard on informercials. For example, "ruffled her feathers" and "got her undies in a bunch" join forces to become "ruffle her undies" or "got her feathers in a bunch."

The worst part of it is that people just nod along with what I'm saying, the only hint that they caught my mistake being the glimmer of pity in the corner of their eye. Sometimes, it takes me days to realize what I've said, and I then get an instant replay of the pity and the glimmering and the silent nodding that I should have known was for me.

Anyway, I guess this is just one giant warning to the people who will meet me at VidCon and other shindigs in 2012. I'll try to wear a name tag, but you can also just wait 'til someone says, "Oh, you know what they say! 'A fly in the hand is worth two thousand words!'"

Sigh.