Talking Southern No. 94 : Victrola Needles, et al.

    We are all familiar with folks who don’t seem to draw breath; who talk in hurricane-force gusts; who, in the words of your compiler’s late mother, would give an aspirin a headache; or who could (also in your compiler’s late mother’s words) talk the horns off a billy goat.  In other words, folks with the gift of gab…on triple-dose steroids – the kind of folks who suck all the air out of a room.

     These folks come in several categories.  One is what your compiler calls, “The Babbling Idiot.”  He has an acquaintance who falls into this category, who can talk longer and in more detail about more uninteresting things than one who doesn’t know him would have thought possible.  A mutual acquaintance once told your compiler, “That guy uses more words to say less than anyone I ever met.”   

     Your compiler’s late father would have said, “That fellow could bore a cigar store Indian to death.”  One can barely even string thoughts together when in the presence of a Babbling Idiot; the background noise he or she produces is that distracting and aggravating.

      Then there’s what your compiler calls, “The Self-Anointed Expert.”   Such a person can be illustrated by the European millionaire your compiler once knew, whom we’ll call “Neville,” who was invited to a mutual friend’s house for Thanksgiving one year in the late 1970s.   Neville, a middle-aged man at the time, had been born with a withered left hand.  His left arm was normal down to about the elbow, but tapered off to a small undeveloped hand at its end.  This was NOT a handicap for Neville, who had overcome the potential handicap with the gusto with which he approached life in general.

     Neville, who had inherited money and married money, never worked a day in his life, but was ever eager to demonstrate his expertise in almost anything and virtually everything.  On this Thanksgiving Day, he took over carving the turkey from the man of the house, telling his host he was doing it all wrong.   

    Hans then wedged a long, narrow whetstone between his torso and withered left arm, and  began, with flashy, exuberant strokes, to sharpen the carving knife he held in his good right hand.  A child of the house, approximately eight years old, came in just as this scene was unfolding. “YOU MUST ALWAYS CUT AWAY FROM YOURSELF WHEN SHARPENING A KNIFE,” Neville boomed, “OR YOU MIGHT CUT OFF YOUR ARM OR YOUR HAND!”   

     The little boy’s eyes widened to the size of saucers, and he ran from the room hollering for his little brother, “Walker, Walker, Walker, get in here quick!  This man was sharpening a knife in the kitchen and just cut off his hand!”  One never knows what might happen with a Self-Anointed Expert.

    Finally, there’s the run-of-the-mill chatterbox, who is nowhere near as extreme as a Babbling Idiot of a Self-Appointed Expert.  Toymakers even made a doll based on this sort of talker.  While your compiler eschewed dolls with all the disdain a boy child could muster, which is considerable, he remembers his sister had a doll called “Chatty Cathy.”  That’s as good a name for this sort of chatterbox as any, although your compiler guesses we’d need to use “Chatty Clarence” when talking about a male. 

     Or we could mimic your compiler’s late mother, who was liable to say, “ I love Ovaleen, I really do, but I swannee, I believe she must have been vaccinated with a victrola needle!”