My Bad: Your voice is nothing like I had anticipated

I don’t know about ya’ll but whenever I’ve been talking to a dude over the www for a while I unintentionally begin to pair them up with a unique voice. I’m not quite sure how the ol’ brain works out the math or logistics into deciphering the specifics of their particular dialect and tone, but after a while I begin to read their e-mails and instant messages in the voice that I’ve inadvertently assigned to them without even realizing that I am doing so. Perhaps this is my mind tricking me into believing that the words I’m reading on the screen belong to “real” people rather than some factitious sasquatch-dragon-unicorn hybrid of sorts (although, that would be pretty awesome). That, and reading messages in a Stephen Hawking computer voice would just be creepy. And so, this little subconscious exercise of mine has obviously thrown me for a loop time and time again when I finally do meet up with these chaps and their real voice is nothing like what my head had previously finagled up for them. At first I feel a little tricked but then am reminded that in the end I only have myself to blame for making presumptions. However, I must admit that the outcomes can be quite hilarious. Surprise! You have a Quebecois accent and I can’t understand a GD thing you say. Surprise! You sound like Kermit the frog. Surprise! You talk in monotone and I feel like I’m on a date with Ben Stein. Surprise! It takes you 5 minutes to blurt out a sentence, half broken at best. Surprise! Despite your burly and rugged outer appearance you sound like you’re going through puberty. Surprise! You are Mumbly McMumblerson and I have to keep on asking “what?” approximately every 17 seconds. Oh internets – you master of disguise you! And seemingly, no matter how many times I feel that I should have learned my lesson I still continue to pre-assign voices to these poor lads before I actually hear them in the wild. Maybe I need an intervention of some sorts. Maybe Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC needs to lure me in with promises of fresh baked cookies and lemonade only to ask me to “take a seat” and scare me straight. I’ll bring the case of vodka coolers and he can bring on the shame.

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