The Mortification of Lois Lane
 | ||||
| A pleasant pheasant |
So sometimes in this
big goop of neurons that are busy inside my skull, information
doesn't always flow in the right order.
That's why I have the
tendency to say the wrong word, because somehow the image that is in
my brain is the not the sound it hears, and then when it leaves my
mouth it's completely mangled and people are staring at me wondering
what I just said. Thank you English language for your words that
don't pronounce the way they're spelled. My brain doesn't appreciate
you.
Case in point:
Yesterday, I was
interviewing a cook for my most recent article for the paper. First
of all, I was tired, but I beginning to think I'm always tired- and I
was in the process of royally screwing up on completing this article.
(I was interviewing
and writing on the day of my deadline, yet I had known about it for
weeks. If that is not last minute...I do actually have excellent
reasons for not getting it done sooner but really it doesn't matter.
So yesterday morning when I awoke, I laid in bed telling myself it
was going to be a really sh*tty day for a variety of reasons, my last
minute article one of them, and I just laid there---
Accomplishing nothing
except perfecting the art of self pity. Something I have to work on
because I was raised by a Mom that most of the time when faced with a
problem, told me to pull up my boot straps and continue on. Actually,
the advice isn't all the bad. I've learned to counter it with a
little bit of sulking every once and a while, and in the meantime
through all the hard stuff in my life, it's been the motto in the
back of my head.)
But back to my story:
I finally grew disgusted with myself, just laying there and
complaining and whining.
“Christy,” I said
to myself, but not aloud because then people think you're a little
weird for talking to yourself, even though I'm sure most people do it
in their heads most of the time, “You can't just call your editor
and whine and tell her you're not doing the article. It needs done
and failure is not an option.”
I'm so bossy.
I sat down, with
coffee, and mulled over my angle for this story. I had nothing.
Didn't know my angle. I had been trying to call someone for quotes
and they were ignoring me.
“Because I'm sure
'she's in a meeting' every time I call is code for ignore her.
Especially when the receptionist says, “You're that freelance
writer, right? Hold on. Oh, yeah, she's in a meeting.”
Sure.
Finally, I decided I
would call the food vendors that were going to be participating in
this event I was supposed to be writing about.
Bingo.
I call the burrito
lady with the food truck. Quotes, quotes and more quotes.
And now I was
suffering from a grumbling stomach, apparently half a pomegranate was
not a big enough lunch. And Buffalo Green Chili sounded good to my
hunger pains.
And then I called the
catering guy who will be preparing game bird for this event.
“Hi, so I read
you're going to be making a peasant soup?”
Silence and then a bit
of laughter.
“Umm, you mean
pheasant? I'm making a pheasant soup.”
Mortification.
“I suppose you don't
want to make soup out of peasants, huh?” I asked, when I could
speak again.
“No, we'll be making
it out of pheasant, you know it's a bird.”
After that I wouldn't
even pronounce the word 'pheasant'- referring to it as the bird.
“You mean the
pheasant?” He would fill in the blank. I think he was mocking me.
But I know my brain,
if I mispronounce a word once, it gets stuck on that pronunciation
and I will mispronounce again.
So success. I wrote
the article and submitted it.
And then I read it
this morning and realized that instead of writing about the pheasant,
I wrote about the pleasant bird.
My catering guy was
cooking pleasant soup.
Yikes!
I was really starting
to hate this bird.
I emailed my editor
and explained that although I'm sure the catering guy's soup will be
pleasant, if she could correct my pleasant soup for pheasant soup I
would really appreciate that.
She emailed me back a
smiley face.
At least she didn't
wish me a pheasant day.
