You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
One hen. Two ducks. Three squawking geese.
It’s called the announcers test. It was made famous in the 1940’s.
I guess radio announcers would warm up their vocal chords by reciting gobbledygook sentences of nonsensical oration.
It stretches the lips, the gums and creates crisp dialogue.
Four Lymric Oysters. Five Corpulent Porpoises. Six pairs of Don Alverso’s Tweezers.
It’s a tongue twister, a nursery rhyme, an exercise of multi syllabic proportions.
The announcer’s test is a secret code, a seldom repeated oration of precision.
Only a select few in the radio industry even knew what this verbal exercise meant.
Seven Thousand Macedonians in full battle array.
Then Jerry Lewis made it famous by reciting the announcer’s test. He used it to entertain the audience during the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day Telethon.
Eight Brass Monkey’s from the Ancient Sacred Crypts of Egypt.
Year after year, the comedian, this wacky professor of words, would challenge his audience to follow along as he spewed out dancing sentences of incredible diction.
Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates with a marked propensity toward procrastination and sloth.
My dad was born in 1934. Somewhere between here and there, he heard the announcers test. It stuck to his brain like glue.
I hear things all the time. They enter my ears and then fall out of my brain, lost in an interminable pile of so what.
But for whatever reason, the small boy heard the announcers test and it wedged into his frontal lobe, remaining like static cling on the inside of a plastic bag.
He said he only saw it once. He said he just remembered it. I don’t know how you could possibly hear it once and remember it, but that’s the story.
Ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who all stall around the quo quay of the quivy all at the same time.
It is an absurd assortment of verbs and nouns ripping across the tongue and epiglottis, piling into the air in a train wreck of consonants and guttural sounds.
And somehow the man absorbed it.
And he told his friends. And he told his army buddies.
Then he got married and he told his wife. Then he had a kid and told that kid. Then he had more kids and told them.
One Hen. Two ducks. Three Squawking geese.
Then he told his nephews and more wives and their kids and their friends.
Four lymric oysters. Five corpulent porpoises.
Suddenly the boy who learned a ferociously frantic narrative had become the tip of the linguistic spear.
That boy became a man and then a octogenerian.
Six pairs of Don Alverzo’s Tweezers.
And now it was time to give the man with the announcer’s test engraved on his soul, something back.
But what?
7,000 Macedonians in full battle array.
What do you give to a man who is 80 years old, who has been around the world, who has fought wars, and raised kids, and built a life. What do you give the elder statesman of a family who seemingly has everything?
You help him celebrate a memory that’s as powerful as the strands of time.
And that’s when the 1st son came up with the plan. Have anyone in the family tree who had ever heard about 8 brass monkeys or 9 apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates, and make them recite this narration.
Record it on cell phones and video. Send it as Quick Time files and whatever the iphone Gods allow.
Send it. All ten lines. One line. Send what you can remember. outtakes, mistakes, perfectly punctuated sentences that shine like polished silver.
And that is what the family tree did.
From the youngest grandson to the oldest nephew, the announcers test began to grow, to live, to be recited by 3 generations who had listened to the old man’s odd narrative of linguistic joy.
The videos were sent from Portland and San Diego, and Tuscaloosa. They were emailed from Texas and Monterey and Santa Cruz and Nashville.
Suddenly there was an announcer’s test stew percolating on the internet.
It was assembled in a desultory pattern as free as blowing sand on the Sahara.
The video was posted to You Tube and wrapped in a bow.
It was decorated with black and white photos of the old man as a child, as a soldier, as a father, as a husband.
Grandkids and nephews and daughters and the blood of the family tree recited the lyrical spherical rhyme as it had been told to them over the decades of life.
There was no script. There were only memories of a man who gathered his loved ones before him every Christmas, every Easter, every birthday and he would suddenly scream.
“OK! ONE HEN! TWO DUCKS!”
Wives would roll their eyes and grand kids would say “I forgot it.”
The old man would not take no for an answer.
One hen. One hen two ducks. One hen two ducks three squawking geese.
It was a gigantic run on sentence of frolicking fun and tongue twisting word association.
And so it would go till the final stanza.
A crescendo of alliteration and lip popping pulsations.
And after the final line.
“Who all stall around the quo quay of the quivy at the same time,” there would be a cheer knowing that another sacred bond had been adhered to, maintained, sustained.
And now 80 years have passed.
The man walks with a brace and his belly is bigger than those black and white army photos from the 50’s, but his mind is still sharp.
So the man watches the 4 minute compilation and there is emotion, and pride, and a sense that he has left a legacy that will live beyond his 80 years.
Will the youngest grandson pass this on to his grandson?
It’s an interesting question.
The announcer’s test.
Its inventor surely never imagined it would nurture a family and bind the youngest and the oldest in a time warp of connectivity.
A rhythmic, rolling exercise in verbosity, designed as vocal tool, has now become a right of passage for this family.
From the cradle to the grave and beyond?
One hen. Two Ducks. Three Squawking geese.
The announcer’s test.
Only the winds of time know for sure.
Life’s Crazy™