hard to tawrrrrrrggggrrrrkkkkk.

I think I need a vocal coach. Not for singing, in particular, (though that could hardly hurt,) but for just regular speaking. This is not ordinarily a problem as, in day to day life, I am of a sufficiently taciturn nature that I rarely need to speak except in short bursts. But, in the event that I do need to utter more than a few sentences without a vocal break, my voice begins to grind like brakes without pads, or knees without cartilage. It’s uncomfortable, and probably doesn’t sound very nice to boot.

Lately this is troublesome, because I read to Jeff. There is not much excitement in a day of chair-sitting, and patio-sweeping, so, if we can break it up with a chapter of Bill Bryson, everyone benefits. Currently, we’re working on The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, and Bill is putting his unique spin on a dinner of “ineffable crappiness” in Virginia. Jeff likes it. I enjoy the opportunity to get the inflection just right on every sentence, and employ my best thespian flair to maximize his otherwise-impaired comprehension.

But when, a couple pages in, my voice begins to acquire the timbre of E.T. in his death scene, or Linda Blair with her head on backwards, I can’t help but wonder whether I simply don’t use my vocal equipment properly.

When I was 19, I took a basic music theory class in college. The professor had us meet with him in small groups, to practice hitting notes with the one instrument we’d have with us at all times--our voices. One exercise went decidedly higher than my comfort level, and I said so. “Any female worth her salt can hit that note,” he said. So I did. I hit it, (and higher ones, a good many more times years later when I took a voice class at the Community College.) And I remember one other thing that professor said. It was an observation, that I speak in a tone that’s lower than my “natural” speaking voice.

Why would I do that? Because I learned early that my “real” voice, as revealed by the cassette recorder/player that we kids got one Christmas, was (to my ear) babyish and squeaky? Maybe, after that, I developed a habit of trying to lower my voice. Perhaps, if I actually spoke “correctly,” I could get through a few more pages of Bill Bryson without rolling off the road into the vocal gutter.

But I don’t know how you do that. So, if we speak, and you notice my tone becoming oddly light and airy, just know--I’m merely recalibrating.