Lazy Tongue

I suspect that most people are like me, singing along to our favourite songs when we are driving, doing the dishes and of course in the shower. I like to make noise in parking garages (empty of course), public stairwells and on the very odd occasion, mountain tops. It always sounds so good.

Curiously, although it sounds good to us, no one else would agree with us. If you want to verify that, just go to any bar that has a karaoke night. Sure, there is the odd person that doesn’t make you want to stick sharp pencils in your ears, but those people are few and far between. Even people who sound pretty good are just pretty good. Maybe I am just too critical. Maybe I am just a dick.

I have a friend whose daughter sings and every now and then I will listen to her videos on youtube. She isn’t a professional, and I’m sure with a little more work and some professional coaching she might be able to make a living as a lounge singer. That sounds critical, but I wish I could sing half as good as she does. Even an eighth as good would be a vast improvement over what comes out of my body. Either end!

I had a speech impediment when I was a little guy. They called it a lazy tongue and once a week a speech therapist with the Scarborough school board would come to Maryvale PS and those of us who had some kind of speaking problem would go and sit in a small office trying to talk like everyone else. I still don’t know what a “lazy tongue” is. I always assumed it was slurring the words, but now that I think about it, it may have been more involved. There was a story my mom and dad would tell me about my speech deficiency and they were kind enough to laugh about it every time. I mixed up the “tr” sound with the “fff” sound so that whenever I pointed out a fire truck that I wanted for Christmas, I would say something like “Mommy, mommy, I want that big red fire fffuck!”

Like I say, to this day I have no idea if my speech impediment has improved significantly. I do use the “f” word quite a lot, but generally the situations deserve it. Those sessions with the speech lady were good for another reason. It was the first time that I ever heard my actual voice. I thought my voice sounded pretty normal, but it turned out that I had a very squeaky, high pitched, irritating voice, and it hasn’t changed very much over the years. For the life of me I don’t know why someone hasn’t begged me to do cartoon voices, I’m a natural!

I can remember the shame I felt every time I went back to class and had to speak out loud to the class. With that horrible voice fresh in my head, I simply wanted to slump down in my chair and never speak again. It’s a good thing I lived when I did, or I would have taken advantage of the technology of today and used an electronic voice. I still don’t like my voice, but I have become used to it over the years. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t change it in a flash if there was an easy way to do so. Until they cure all of those other serious diseases and move on to the inconsequential ones, I will have to just live with my lazy tongue

I think the lazy tongue has spread throughout my entire body.