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September 19th, International Talk Like a Pirate Day, a day widely celebrated by many and feared with big sharp pointy teeth by many others. Me, I tread the line between amusement and non-celebration, being all eye-patch and no tongue when it comes to the ways of our fine feather-shouldered laddies.
My dear friend Marianne recently made a joke that she felt it was time to move on, to venture towards other cliche icons. Sure she could have gone the route of ninjas (always a crowd pleaser) or zombies (who seem to be more and more in fashion nowadays that I'm almost worried the day of the REAL zombie apocalypse most people will just be plain bored with them: (Year 2057)
Zombie: BRAAAAAINS
Trendy Gal: Oh, PLEEEEAZE. That's so 2005. And what the hell are you wearing? I wouldn't be buried alive in that! God! Will you just pry open my skull already and stop drooling all over my shoulder? I've gotta go get my nails done so move it. Move it! Oh how pleased I was when Ms Marianne instead opted for TALK LIKE A LUMBERJACK DAY, a much under appreciated, though still quite iconic stereotyped profession! It took me no time to declare a date so now I will officially say it here first:
September 26th (aka Monday) is now OFFICIAL TALK LIKE A LUMBERJACK DAY!
Now, I hear the murmuring out there, and I can't say I blame you. In my excitement to declare the day a holiday I sorta forgot one important detail...er how the hell do lumberjacks talk?
Lumberjacks do not have a specific vernacular. There's no generic "ARG" to put whenever your heart pleases there's no real shortening of words with accompanied scurvy-induced face grimace. No lumberjack jokes end with a "Booty" equivalent. In fact...I'm not even sure if there ARE lumberjack jokes. Sure there's TIIIIIIIMMBBBER and maybe perhaps adding some Canadian accented "eh" here and there but really that's about it.
Luckily that's not going to stop me from declaring TALK LIKE A LUMBERJACK DAY a holiday because I know a LOT about lumberjacks.
In FACT I used to be one. And no. I'm not kidding.
Colleen's a lumberjack and she's okay...
I used to spend my summers as a swim coach for a quite respected camp program, where they would bus all of us over the country, stopping at colleges along the route for week stints where 100's of aspiring aquatic-kiddies would come to learn from some of the best swimmers in the world. Our staff was speckled with olympic hopefuls, world record holders, and me...the girl that never even made it close to a state rank, but was deliriously good at jump-roping (*cough world record holder 1998-2000 cough*) and often the only one on staff that could understand what the 7 year olds were saying.
One summer in desperate need of some extra funds our head coach, who just went by the name "Coach" (though it was always said as affectionately as "dad") offered for me to come and live with his family in Virginia helping get some paperwork together for the trip.
Now Coach and I got along splendedly, so splendidly that after a few days in Virginia, Coach decided he should make me a Lumberjack.
His winter job was running a company called (no joke) Lumberjacks, Inc. chopping down log stuff with big fancy machines and driving up and down the countryside delivering tons of lumber to campsites and convinience stores. His son was a champion ax thrower. I spent a good number of afternoons throwing axes at logs with targets painted on them...though an on looker would have probably assumed I was trying to hit the swingset 20 feet over to the left instead since I never even was able to smack the blunt edge of the ax to the log. (Just a word of warning...my dart throwing is quite similar to my ax throwing. Just ask that guy at that party from 11th grade...you know HIM, the guy with the dart I just threw stuck in the side of his head...the one who's too drunk to notice.)
That summer we ate massive amounts of pancakes (seriously we did!) We we must have been taking the long route to pass every single Waffle house in the northern hemisphere. My role as a lumberjack, other than strapping the wood down on the trailer and saying stupid things to make Coach laugh and tell me I was weird, was to wear a size XL shirt that simply said "Lumberjack" draped down to my knees and walk up to the campsites--"Hey, I'm the lumberjack here to deliver your wood. You wanted two tons right? Where should I put it?" Upon hearing this usually 5 men would be sent out to help me carry it, men who wouldn't have lifted a finger if Coach had been the one at the door.
Sure I should be mad that such a sexist attitude still existed, but in all honesty I thought it was pretty hysterical, and also in all honesty I'm pretty sure I could have destroyed all of those men in armwrestling matches (we won't even get into the jump-roping)
Now back from my long rambling Lumberjack tale to teach all of you how to talk like one. Forget about that fake Canadian accent and remember we are only trying to talk like them not LOOK like them (though fake beards and serving pancakes all day long would be a lovely way of celebrating as well) All and all all you really need to do to talk like a Lumberjack is just talk really REALLY LOUD! That log splitter friggin' ROARS. Any true lumberjack can't hear for shit after a long day on the job.
The End! Now Go Talk Loud!
....you think that's too simple? Well how about checking out this dictionary of Lumberjack jargon or even BETTER how about this:
Just talk like the lumberjack you know best. ME!
How to Talk Like Colleen:
1. Get rid of any accent you may have, make your voice a muddled conglomeration of dialects resulting in a quite boring non-identifiable sound
2. To make up for the non-accent mispronounce words, like "breakfast" and "Mario" why? because it's sexy and um...I really can't say those words
3. Swear all the time, but only with made up swear words such as "Crappers" "Crapparo" "Crappity-Crap-Crap"
4. When you talk during the day, make sure to talk to yourself more than anyone else, also talk in your sleep
5. Laugh a lot. Especially when nothing funny has been said.
5. Make sure when you start a story (or in the middle of a story) you use a lot of (quite unnecessary) parenthesizing and meander as far away from your original (no matter how funny it may be) tale by adding thoughts (I still really want to try pop rocks and soda someday) of aging female comedians and obscure desert rodents
Hope you all have a Happy Talk Like Colleen Who Was Once A Lumberjack For One Summer In 1999 Day!
Now...who wants pancakes?
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