Murmel Murmel Murmel

One of my favorite books growing up was Robert Munsch's "Murmel Murmel Murmel" - a story of a girl named Robin who finds a hole in yer backyard. Robin yells down the hole louder and louder "ANYBODY DOWN THERE???" to the same response of "murmel, murmel, murmel" coming out of the hole. She finally decides to stick her hand down there to discover what's making the noise and pulls out a baby. The rest of the story, Robin tries to find someone who can care for the baby, who the whole time talks to Robin with its incomprehensible gibberish of "murmel, murmel, murmel."

While the murmling of a baby is perfectly cute, it's cute because babies grow out of it starting at 10-12 months (though if your baby is not there yet, not worries). Well, at 271 months of age, I seem to have not grown out of it.

I have always had a mumbling problem. In elementary school, my teachers would send notes to my parents and write comment after comment on my report cards saying some variation of "Naomi needs to speak with confidence," "Naomi needs to enunciate her words," or "We cannot hear Naomi when she speaks and I need to constantly ask her to speak up."

Over the years, I thought I had improved. When I presented in high school and college, my teachers and professors no longer had to ask me to speak up. Among friends, people rarely asked me to repeat what I said.

I was wrong.

Being in Mexico has highlighted the extreme lack of improvement in my murmeling. Before Mexico, my friends of one, two, or three years had faked me into believing that they understood me at all times. Instead, I have figured out that my friends had mastered the motions of "fake understanding" over the course of our relationship. If they couldn't decipher what I was saying, they would just look at my face, read its emotion, and give me an appropriate response ranging from laughing to sighing without understanding what I actually said.

In Mexico, I began to meet all new people - people who hadn't developed response strategies. The first month I noticed that my co-workers and friends had to repeatedly ask me what I had just said. At first I blamed it on their hard hearing or my lack of sleep. After a couple months, I realized I am the problem.

I don't believe that living in a Spanish-speaking environment has helped me any. My English has gone down the drain because I don't speak it quite as much as I used to. Now my mumbling has taken a turn for the worse.

I think that 271 months of age is the perfect time to achieve the next level of language development. I'm just gonna ask for your assistance. And for all you who have dealt with years of my incomprehensible giberish, I have a couple of words for you:

aljho sdfh kjdyf gkjhf

I knew you'd understand.