Friday, January 16, 2009

speechless

Steve's sudden speechlessness, which makes it more than a little difficult to teach the Bible, has left me considering (irrelevantly) which jobs are least able to be done when you have laryngitis. Here's the list so far:

- preacher
- opera singer
- spruiker
- sports commentator
- voice coach
- ringmaster
- lawyer
- door to door salesman
- rowing cox
- school teacher
- audience warm up person
- interpreter
- call centre employee
- news reader
- stand up comedian
- actor
- interrogator
- speech therapist
- performance poet
- TV reporter
- ventriloquist
- psychiatrist
- phone receptionist
- inspirational speaker

Imagine a spruiker communicating only with gestures, or a ventriloquist limited to writing things on paper, and you'll see what I mean.

Trying to think up additions to the list is surprisingly absorbing. You have a go.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Jean. Welcome back from holidays. Nice to have you back.

Once when I was teaching in the country I got a dose of laryngitis and for the first day, there was no relief teacher to be found! I had 36 children in my class, 34 of whom were hard to handle!! And I had to teach them with no voice. Yet they were SO quiet and SO well behaved as I signed my way through the day, wrote instructions on the board, had them take turns to read out the current novel we were reading through... I dare say the novelty would have worn off and was glad that there was a relief teacher to cover me for the rest of the time though! And it did get me out of yard duty that day too.

Do you know how hard it is to ring up your school in the morning to ask for a relief teacher when you have laryngitis? That's a funny memory.

Love Meredith

Jean said...

What an amazing story Meredith! Good on you for teaching anyway, and how amazing that the kids were so well behaved! Maybe Steve should try preaching with no voice? Or maybe not. ;)

Gordon Cheng said...

-Person who does 'Voice of Dalek' on Dr Who.

-Dying man about to tell only child where the treasure is buried.

-Speech pathologist.

Gordon Cheng said...

PS did you ever see this?

Jean said...

Tee hee, very good.

I knew you wouldn't be able to resist the challenge, Gordo. Is speech pathologist the same as speech therapist?

As for the Daleks, I think that guy has permanent laryngitis - or some kind of voice problem, anyway.

And if we're talking sci fi, how about the computer on Star Trek?

Timothy Wonil Lee said...

Telemarketer?