Selling seashells, picking pecks of pickled peppers
Some of you have already embraced summer by going on vacation, planning a vacation or maybe you’re on a vacation or stay-cation right now. Perhaps you’re working while dreaming about a vacation and wondering if you’ll ever be able to get around to it.
With a lot of folks sharing photos and stories of their travels, especially beaches (though I much prefer the mountains personally), my mind wandered recently to a familiar tongue-twister of my childhood, one of the first I remember, and I’ve practiced it, perhaps like many of you, more times than I can say.
She sells seashells by the seashore. Easy enough. Now, say it three times fast. She sells seashells by the seashore. She sells seashells by the seashore! SHE-SELLS-SEA-SNAILS-BY-THE-SEA-STORE! Whoa! That took a bit of a turn. Step back and leave those snails alone. They have no place on a beach anyway, come to think of it. They probably need help. Or they would, if they actually existed.
Six “simple” words. How fast can you recite them without stumbling and falling in the hypothetical sand to be mocked by judgmental sea critters, passing Visigoths or other passersby? Who is “she” anyway? (Sally. I decided. It’s only logical. Well, it certainly plays into the alliterative tongue-twister theme.)
Let’s hop over to another familiar tongue twister, involving Peter Piper. I understand he picked a peck of pickled peppers. But, if he picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked? (What does one do with pickled peppers anyway?) I learned this one from my mom. Probably the other one, too, or maybe my dad. Hard to be sure now, though it could also have been a record.
It’s rather my favorite, and one I had to practice even more and I get greater satisfaction out of reciting quickly, correctly and loudly (triumphantly)! Having long ago mastered it, I occasionally dust it off and take it for a spin, but I’d not contemplated it much for a good while until one day in college when I decided to audition for a play on campus.
I don’t remember the title or what it was about, but I remember getting on stage (after spending time with a partner from among one of the other casting hopefuls, practicing a scene). Standing there, along with a few others, one thing I remember for sure about the experience is being asked to recite “Peter Piper.” Okay, fine. I’ve got this! This is going to be easy as pie! – But wait! There’s more! – In a New York accent. (Crickets chirp.)
I had no idea where to even begin with that. I had precisely one accent to offer, the Southern one I’d grown up with, and I stared blankly, completely shocked by the out-of-left-field request. Nobody had mentioned needing to do anything like that, and I’d already been there a good while. I think I wound up saying it normally, disgusted by the unusual request, though it’s a bit amusing now.
Another thing I remember is being asked if I was comfortable using “adult language” on stage. (I wasn’t). All the way back as I walked, going slowly from Norton Auditorium at UNA to my dorm, I tried to recite it in a New York accent.
I thought I might have had a wisp of it a time or two, but I was basically just annoyed. If you think I let it go at this point, you’d be wrong. I occasionally still give it a whirl, and I have something of an accent other than my own to it at this point, though I’d not dare venture brandishing it in front of an actual New Yorker.
