They Knew That They Were Naked

Don't mix your meh-tuh-fors or get caught with your pants down

I was asked recently to read a passage from the bible at the funeral of one of my mother’s dearest friends. I immediately replied yes to the ask, but in the back of my mind the answer was, “Yes, as long as the reading doesn’t have the word naked in it.”

When I was a senior in high school in Virginia, I was asked to do a reading from Genesis at chapel for the Christmas service. Something about Adam and Eve they knew that they were naked yadda yadda. It was during rehearsal for this service (thank god there was one, and no I am not going to cap that word) that the Episcopal priest pointed out that the correct pronunciation of the word was NAY-kid, not NEK-kid, as I had been reading it. To say I was humiliated was an understatement. It was one of those moments when my sometimes-judgy mother would have leaned into a friend who’d just performed a faux pas and whispered, “Watch out honey, the red around your neck is starting to show.”

It took me several days of saying the word aloud over and over again (NAY-KID… NAY-KID… NAY-KID) to undo what eight years of insufficient primary school in South Carolina had taught me. And even with all that practice, I was terrified that during the service I’d revert to my old ways. Being one of only a handful of day student girls in an all-boys boarding school didn’t lessen the anxiety either. I was such a literary know-it-all that mispronouncing the word naked in front of a room full of boys (and my beloved English professor, Mr. McCracken) would have been almost as bad as having to stand up there with my pants down.

Thankfully, the day came, and I made it through without slipping up.

It ended up that the funeral happened during the recent flight fiasco of 2024, so I never made it to Kentucky to read the passage (of course it had the word naked in it) from Corinthians. However, as a middle-aged undergrad, that young adult slip-up haunts me whenever I’m asked to read aloud in class. A cold reading of anything can lead to disasters greater than having your Carolina roots show through. Now, it is not only miseducation, but menopause word-farts that stand in the way.

Case in point, a few semesters ago, I was taking a class on literary criticism, and I found myself unwittingly in the middle of a round-robin read-aloud. I was reading a passage about something, and I saw a word approaching from the corner of my eye. In an instant, I knew that the word was something simple. I reached for it but my menopausal brain was not letting me wrap my mouth around how to say it. It was an easy word. One I surely knew how to pronounce. But the same part of the menopausal brain that makes you forget what the word for the-thing-that’s-made-of-glass-and-you-drink-out-of-it is called, I had no idea how to say MEH-TUH-FOR aloud. This was a 101 class for god’s sake, and I was the assistant director of the university press! There was no way in hell I was going to mispronounce or blank on that word in front of a bunch of 19-year-old English majors. So with only seconds to come up with a plan, and only a word or two away from the offending noun itself, I started coughing. Uncontrollably.

When the professor asked me what was wrong, through my coughs I uttered, “I think (hack hack) some kind of bug just flew down my (hack) throat.” It didn’t take long for him to realize my reading was over, and he quickly asked the student beside me to pick up where I left off. I felt so stupid when two seconds later my brain screamed METAPHOR! METAPHOR! METAPHOR! The guilt I carried was so thick and the fear that someone might question my condition was so intense that throughout the rest of the class, I kept on coughing here and there, just to keep up the ruse.

Even though back in my original college days theater was my major (and no I won’t spell it theatRE), I never thought as an English major that acting training would come in handy. But hey, being able to pretend I was getting choked by a moth sure saved my ass that day. And believe me when I say as a 50-something-year-old woman without complete control of her bladder or, apparently, the English language, there will be a next time. I’m already formulating a plan as to what creature will be next to get sucked down my gullet.

(And yes, I misspelled grammar in the visual on purpose. D’uh.)