Some sort of horrid throat infection has got its talons into my larynx giving me a voice somewhere between Harvey Fierstein and Joan Rivers when it’s working at all. The rest of the time it varies between ‘teen going through puberty’ and ‘nothing at all.’
On Sunday night, I started out the evening a bit lower than usual, thanks in part to having spent the weekend out at camp effectively yelling the entire time. For whatever reason, being out at camp makes me talk REALLY, REALLY LOUDLY and that tends to do me in. It may also have been something to do with late-night Rock Band sessions, late-night staying up too late sessions, dehydration and all sorts of other immune system suppressing good times. By the end of the worship service (in which I was singing an even lower bass than usual), I could barely talk. The second last song I bailed on completely, partly through not knowing it as well as I thought but mostly because I could no longer sing high enough to carry the bass lines. The last song (Hillsong United’s One Way) desperately requires a strong bass part so I decided to go for it and pretty much trashed the system.
Normally I can tell when some kind of sore throaty cold is coming on. I get a dryness in the back of my throat that doesn’t exactly hurt and then weird things happen in my nose. This one happened all at once. I went from ‘a bit rougher than usual’ to ‘well, good luck with that’ in the space of about three hours.
In a probably vain attempt at a speedier healing, I am attempting the titular experiment. It would be more accurately called a non-vocal experiment. I am going to try and go for 24 hours without speaking to anybody at all and then report back. I think it will be an interesting challenge. I am already making up little cards in my mind to hand out to people. They will be something along the lines of “Good day sir or madam. I am not selling anything nor am I working my way through college. I am simply a man struck dumb by horrible bacteria and/or viruses and I wondered if you could help me with _____________________________†where I will fill the blank in with whatever it is I’m looking for.
This will be particularly challenging at work, should I go tomorrow. My very motherly pseudo-boss suggested none-too-subtly that I ought to have taken today off and I may take her suggestion for the morrow. Failing that, I am going to use something like this text-to-speech deally. I will perhaps change my name temporarily to Stephen Hawking just to save some confusion.