Here’s something else you don’t know about me: I come from a long line of mumblers. My grandparents mumbled. My dad mumbles. My sister mumbles. And yes, I even mumble. And it really tends to irritate people. Here’s a recent example:
I’m went to the Verizon Wireless store on 3rd and La Cienega to look at some phones. I spent a long time pushing buttons and listening to ring tones. Nobody ever came up to offer any assistance. I actually liked that. No hard sell. They wait for you to come to them.
Anyhow, I decided I was finished doing my research, so I walked up to one of the sales people, lifted up my parking ticket and asked the guy to validate it for me.
I wanted to say, “Could you validate this for me?” But because of my mumbling problem, and the fact that I was chewing gum at the time, it came out sounding more like this: “muh. . .”
The sales guy took my ticket and just looked at me. Then this other woman took the ticket from him and said something along the lines of “Usually, people ask to be validated. You don’t just hold up the ticket.” I said that I did ask, but I was chewing gum. She said she was looking at my lips and they never moved. (Yes, she really said that to me. I guess she didn’t want the sale that bad.)
She was probably right. I mean, isn’t that what mumbling is? You don’t move your lips and you just let your tongue and teeth do what they can to make everything clear.
So shoot me. I mumble. I’m sorry. I do it when I’m nervous. Or when I’m feeling a little too relaxed.
There is one exception, however: When I’m presenting my work to the client, I make a conscious effort to enunciate every fuck-ing syl-la-ble. Of course, it makes me sound like an annoying 50s radio announcer. But it sure beats sounding like the goddamn Hamburgler.
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