Dinner Party

It was slightly worrisome, having to host a dinner starting just a couple of hours after returning from a month away. It wasn't the food; except for grilling the meat, Cindy had prepared most of the meal beforehand. It wasn't performance anxiety; this was summer casual, with friends. It was words. Would my mouth work properly? Could I still understand English? For most of 4 weeks, I had averaged 27 words out loud a day, most of them "Let's go," to the dog.

There were lots of other kinds of words last month: printed (novels, crosswords); air waves (Law and Order, GOOOOOOOOAL!); manufactured (Scrabulous, my own essays); telephony (the nightly call from home). But aside from neighborly greetings and canine exhortations, nothing.

Bravely, I did tongue exercises and practiced talking to drivers on I-95. To be presentable, I wiped the moose drool from my shoes. The guests came, and I think it went OK, that is, nobody laughed and they seemed to respond appropriately when I said something. The young people did talk awfully fast and I seemed to be extra tired at the end of the evening and almost of all yesterday was spent recovering, nose-in-book, but generally I think the ME to MA transition was linguistically successful. By the time the week here is up, I may be able to string as many as seven or eight words together at once, just in time to go back to talking to the dog.