This skit better enables me to accept this little known quirk in my life. If Brian Regan has a problem with it and is able to 'own it' among his audience, who am I not to?
Here's a recent example of my pathetic word/letter association attempts in real life:
An elderly person we know called yesterday to ask for our address. I gave it to the person, but they totally got it all wrong. Great. I knew what was next. I was going to have to spell my entire address to a very old person with sub-par hearing. The number part was easy, then came the street name.
I have a confession to make...I hate my street name. In order to be grammatically correct, it should have an apostrophe in it and it should not be one word. This little fact makes it that much harder to communicate it over the phone to an elderly person. So I start with the first letter, that's easy enough, but eventually I get to "N" and I say as in "nap". I was very proud of myself for coming up with that one under duress. I chose to say "W" as in "window", "F" as in "Frank", "O" as in "oh", "H" as in "hat" and "S" as in "silly". At this point, I'm frantically looking around the kitchen for items that start with the letters that I still need examples for.
Brilliantly, I was able to come up with "C" as in "cow" - although I have no cows in my kitchen. But then I started loosing it...my mind went utterly blank and I got a huge case of the giggles. Chuck was in the living room laughing his head off at me and my little "problem" and leaving me hanging with a dear elderly person on the other line waiting for my next pathetic attempt at another letter/word combination.
My voice is cracking from suppressed laughter. My heart is beating so hard from stress that I start sweating. The belly giggles are coming on strong. I can't focus. I just want to scream the letter into the phone and say it over and over again until the person gets it right because I CAN'T THINK OF A WORD TO GO WITH V!
It also doesn't help that I have this Brian Regan clip on repeat in my mind and it's only making matters worse. Chuck doesn't even offer to come rescue his bride. He let's me lie in this pathetic bed I've made for myself.
I finally confess, "I'm not very good at this." To which elderly person, mercifully responds with "V as in victor?" "YES! YES! V as in victor - that's a good one!" 12 minutes later the whole ordeal is behind me and now elderly person wants to small talk with me. That's the next thing down on my list after pathetic letter/word associations that I'm horrible at.
This day just keeps getting better and better.
