Halfway through my 12th birthday, my voice dropped from the grating soprano that causes people to resent children to the sub-audible seismic rumbling that causes people to resent earthquakes. Wondering why I had been dealt such an unlucky card, I spent weeks protesting my fate in a lumbering cadence that I stubbornly refused to recognize as my own. Then I looked around at my friends and realized I hadn't been singled out for punishment.
The ravages of puberty struck everyone differently, with the main similarity being how little thought seemed to have been given toward its coordination.
Each physical transformation proceeded at a pace completely independent of every other one to the point that, on a field trip, our middle school class closely resembled an escaped colony of freaks.
My classmates suddenly sported beards like prehistoric nomads or breasts that caused chiropractic issues. I spoke as though I'd grown up with Muzzy as a speech coach.
I didn't particularly mind being addressed as sir"" by telemarketers while my bearded friend was routinely complimented for being ""such a helpful little girl"" when taking messages from long-distance phone companies. However, as my voice plummeted in register, my rate of speech came almost to a standstill. It sounded as if someone had recorded my voice onto a collection of LPs and then started playing them back at half-speed.
I was blissfully unaware of this until I came home from school one afternoon and caught a voicemail I'd left earlier in the day.
""Hiiiiiiiii, thhhhissss issss Mmmmmotttttt. Iiiii Forrgoootttt myyy shooooes.""
The two sentences yawned out monotonously over the course of half-a-minute, vowels inexplicably broadened, testing the patience of the answering machine tape.
Never before self-conscious about my speech, I had always loved the sound of my own voice as I had been allowed to know it. Unfortunately, this idealized version playing over and over inside my head had nothing to do with the sounds that actually issued from my lips.
Doubtful that I would one day grow into my new voice and start speaking as a normal human again - just as I thought I'd never get used to being an additional foot taller and stop falling down the stairs - I faced two options. The first was to face an eternity of silence. The second was to abandon my native tongue and choose a new dialect, something that would stop people from asking if I had recently emigrated from an anonymous European country known for its slow-talking heritage.
Despite the thousands of miles between Minnesota and California and the fact that I had never seen the Pacific Ocean, surfer slang seemed, to me, a fine choice, and I began practicing my ""Dude's"" and ""Whoa Man's"" with enthusiasm. Because I wasn't able to completely stamp out my northern roots, the final product of my efforts drew unwelcome comparisons to how Pauly Shore might have sounded if he had been tragically miscast for a role in ""Fargo.""
Had there been a larger crossover audience between the Coen brothers and ""Bio-Dome,"" my experiment might have been more successful. As it was, the positive side of the situation was that I was eventually able to grow out of my adopted dialect.
By the time this happened, I had already begun to notice the next wave of age-related transformations, but, having learned my lesson, I'd resolved to handle these with more patience.
In another 20 years, the silver patches in my hair will compare favorably to friends who are losing theirs. When that day comes, I hope I'll think back to our traumatic pre-teen years and realize that I'm still not too mature to mock them.
Connnnntaccccttttt Mmmmooooottttttttttttt at hunziker@wisc.edu.
