Tongue Tied

Have you ever said something and wished you could take it back?? I do that all the time. Sometimes, like this weekend, I say (or email) something that just comes out all wrong. It’s like this quote, “I open my mouth to switch feet!” There are other times, though, that I speak and the world laughs at me (or with me if I am in the mood). I don’t have to try; I am already an expert at this!

Here is an example. I teach math in the middle school. Last year I was becoming more and more frustrated with my honor students waiting until after the bell rang to go sharpen their pencils. I finally decided to broach the subject. It was quite ineffective, though, when I very seriously and very adamantly said, “You must PENCIL your SHARPENS before the bell rings!” Ack! Instead of nodding of heads and compliance, I received shaking of heads and snickers. Oh dear. I do that all the time – switch words – especially if I am trying to talk quickly. In math we end up fractioning the reduces, problem the solves, and finding the triangle of a perimeter. Believe it or not, my students do fairly well in math despite my twisted tongue issues.

I have messed up with my students’ parents, too. (It is a wonder I still have this job! Ha.) Last year during Back to School night, I was sharing with the parents my procedure for missing assignments. I have these pink pieces of paper that the students must fill out. While I was talking, I suddenly wanted to say “sheets” of paper and “slips” of paper at the same time. What came out was a combination of the two – I pretty much used the word “sheets” but with the vowel of “slips” – pink $@#& of paper! Oh my goodness! I know my face got red immediately. The parents (and there were a lot of them) just started to laugh at me. Whew! I looked at them, grinned, and told them I would be getting my resume ready. That just made them laugh more. :)

How about those times when you say something like “bye, love ya” and then realize that you just said that to a cashier at a grocery store? I always finished phone calls with my husband by saying “bye, love ya”. That wasn’t a big deal until I started working a job where I had to use the phone quite often to talk with customers and staff members. More than once I’d finish a call with, “bye, love ya”. I would realize my error as soon as I put the phone down and then wish to melt under my desk and into the floor! I would hope that maybe, just maybe, they disconnected before I did – maybe they didn’t hear my affirmation of love. I KNOW I am not alone in this. I have heard co-workers do the same thing. And do I nod in their direction with sympathy and understanding? Heck no – I double up with laughter. Sorry, I just do. :) It has even happened once to me – a customer said “love ya” as he was hanging up. Again, I laughed out loud (after I had hung up the phone). I think I was just so glad that I am not the only one who accidently does this.

How about talking to yourself? Alright, I might be the only one who does that. :) One day I was driving and making a mental list of everything that needed to get done when I got home. I suddenly had the bright idea to use my cell phone to call my home phone and leave myself a message with the list. At the end of my message I said, “Well, I think that is it. Talk to you later. Bye.” Talk to you later??? Talk to myself later?? I laughed and then looked around to see if anyone had caught me saying that to myself. Then I had to laugh at myself again. I was driving…with the windows up! Everyone around me was driving…with their windows up. I’m not sure who I thought was going to overhear my conversation with myself. Oh dear (shaking my head…and then laughing again).

Some of my favorite Jenny Tongue Tied moments came my first year of teaching. That year, my assignment was with ESL students (English as a Second Language). I had three years of Spanish in high school, but that barely got me started in communicating with these students. One poor boy kept getting called the Spanish word for “alligator” because I was not pronouncing his name correctly. I used wrong words more than once. Imagine the confused look on one father’s face when I told him (in my Spanish) that HE was doing well in my class (instead of his son). In teaching multiplication for the first time to some of these students, I was using some Popsicle sticks to show that multiplication is just grouping (3 groups of 5 sticks is 3 x 5). I did have a translator in that class who finally asked me what I was trying to say in my broken Spanish. When I told her, she laughed and then told me that I was actually talking to the students about “tiny hairs” not “small sticks”. Oops. No wonder they looked confused.

My favorite “oops” from that first year of teaching came during parent-teacher conferences. It just happened that all the classes got changed. This meant that I would be talking with parents that I would no longer have their students in my classes after the conferences. In my broken Spanish, I tried to say, “Wednesday was my last day with your child. Monday, he/she will have a new teacher.” Oh, the confused looks I would get!! Time after time, I would just get this blank stare from the parents. Finally during a break, I went to one of the other teachers to find out what I was doing wrong. You know what it was? Instead of using the word for Monday, I was using the word for Never! I was telling the parents that Wednesday was my last day and their child would NEVER get a new teacher! Ha! No wonder they stared at me with glassy eyes. Thankfully none of those parents ever complained. Obviously they realized I was a young lady who maybe shouldn’t have been trying her Spanish on them.

I have to leave you with one last story from that school year. This time it was not me who had the language problem. It was one of my students. In Social Studies I had the students do a hands-on project where they matched state names with their capitals. One perplexed student raised his hand and asked me, “What is the capital of Alaska?” I answered, “Juneau.” He looked at me so sadly and cried, “No I don’t.” :) It took everything I had not to laugh out loud (sorry kid), and then I explained that I had not just said, “you know!” Yes, that really did happen.