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Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Monday, August 18, 2008

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Have you experienced what I call “complete audio breakdown”? It used to happen to me once in a while when I was a reporter in the big city—you’re interviewing someone, everything’s going fine, and suddenly they say, “dars arepned plax.” You beg their pardon and they explain, “dars arepned plax.” And no matter how many different ways you try to understand them, they just keep repeating, in increasingly irritated tones, “dars arepned plax.”

This instills panic in journalists, who fear A) They’re missing some important bit of information and B) They’re losing their minds. If I ever get interviewed by a reporter, I’m going to slip in, “dars arepned plax.” Right before I shout, “It sounded just like a train,” and burst into maniacal laughter.

But professional audio breakdown isn’t as scary as when your spouse of 25 years speaks to you in a language you’ve never heard, then looks at you expectantly, his eyebrows slightly elevated.

Later, when it is all sorted out, he will claim he asked whether you wanted a cup of tea, and you will accept this, because the alternative is silly. But you know in your heart he said, “ravepor doody.”

Hearing something utterly foreign when you’re not expecting it can cut your lines and set you adrift, conversationally. One day our oldest son came in the front door from school, speaking in agitated tones to his father, who had picked him up from school. I, of course, asked what was wrong, at which the eldest shouted, “Po! Po! I need some Po!”

Evidently my face was extremely amusing. Everyone still laughs about it when it’s brought up. Turns out, Sean needed a piece of Edgar Allen Poe’s writing for a project that was due the next day. My brain didn’t even try to make sense out of “Po! Po!” It just shut down, leaving my face with nothing to do.

I experienced another such moment when, as I was leaving on errands one day, Micheal said, “Don’t forget the apple mouse.” My brain did take a feeble stab at sorting that one out—I froze, envisioning some hideous dessert.

That was Micheal’s fault. What he meant was, we needed a new hand device for our Apple® computer. If he’d remembered to put the registered trademark symbol into his speech, I’d have known what he was talking about.

Sometimes hearing in tongues can be so amusing, the new phrases replace old ones. I was putting our youngest to bed one night when he was small, and told him, “You are very precious to me.” He smiled like an angel and replied, “You’re a hairy piece of cheese, too.”

We still use the phrase affectionately. And where outsiders won’t hear us.

Then there are the eerie phone calls. You know, when you answer and the woman at the other end says, “Susan?” and you acknowledge it and she asks how you are and you say well, and ask her the same, and she’s also well, and she says wasn’t that rain yesterday wonderful, and you agree, and the whole time you’re making small talk your brain is feverishly trying to work out the caller’s identity, and whether it will be unforgivable if you have to who she is, and then she asks, “How’s Tommy?”

And you don’t know any Tommy.

Feeling ridiculous, you explain that you must not be the Susan she called. She sounds a little suspicious, and you wonder if she suspects you of actually being the Susan she called and lying about it, or of not being Susan at all, and toying with her. But she eventually concedes the point, and you both hang up.

And you think, what a shame—we were getting along so well.

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