Thanks for the warning, P.A. Guy

Back in my bachelor days, way before the Internet was even conceived of and in an era when people actually wrote real honest-to-gosh letters that they mailed with real stamps, I came across an interesting habit among some correspondents.

Let me explain:

I’d been late in replying to one pen pal and got a letter whose writer seemed irate and who wrote something like, “And if I don’t receive a letter from you by this afternoon, I’ll never write to you again.” Then she added (in parentheses) “joke!”

Well, that did it. She chided me for not writing as quickly as I might but needed to assure me that she didn’t really mean it when she threatened the boycott. Here’s what she might have been thinking as she wrote the letter: If I don’t include “joke!” Art will think I’m serious about the threat.

Writers like her are also among those who sprinkle “ha ha” interlinearly, lest the recipient not realize the writer’s trying to be funny. But it’s all part of the way things are expressed: When we see and hear a person face to face, we can usually figure out the tone. But how can writing, with its one-dimensional manner of communicating, really show when a person is serious?

Notice how often, particularly in the heat of political conventions such as the one just concluded and the one in progress, speakers refer to something an opponent said and try to make it seem worse than it was. Imagine that the person spoke something ironically which, when transferred to print, loses all traces of irony.

But it’s not only irony — the opposite of what we expect — that loses its impact in translation. Sometimes, in speaking, by just a slight raising of a particular syllable, we can show anger, threats, sorrow, fear and a slew of emotions. 

One thing I wasn’t expecting, and something I heard for the first time — unless I’d never realized it — came last weekend when I attended an out-of-town football game with my son Ben. Now we realize that in that little Texas town, where cattle and jackrabbits outnumber people, and the big thing is six-man football, they get public address system volunteers, not Bob Costas or Marv Albert.

In that cow-lot stadium, a man in a cowboy hat and Lee Riders provided the highlights. From the opening kickoff, things sounded wrong and for a while we thought the P.A. announcer might be haranguing the players, in lieu of their coach. He said, “And the kickoff is returned by No. 24,” as if we couldn’t see the action and as if No. 24 were someone we all knew intimately. We needed a name, ese! Did his tone mean No. 24 ought not handle the ball again? But No. 24 was their best runner.

The tone of his voice was more impressive. He didn’t simply say “No. 24,” but “Number twenty-fo-o-ur, with a slight rise in the hyphenated part. Decades of listening to people speak have convinced me that “twenty-fo-o-ur,” spoken just that way, sounds more like a warning. Should No. 23 or 33 have fielded the ball instead?

Then the home team decided to take a timeout, duly reported by the P.A. Guy. Now we all know that each team is allotted a certain number of timeouts; it’s not as if they’re in short supply. And besides, it’s up to the ref, not the announcer, to grant them. But the P.A. Guy seemed to be parceling them out grudgingly and gave an impatient-warning-type tone when announcing the time-ouuut. 

The ominous tone indicated he was peeved and determined not to reveal or grant more time-ouuuts.

Ben and I didn’t watch the game too closely after that, our being tied up in simply listening to the irritated, ominous clarion call of the P.A. Guy and the way he added a syllable to every word that sounded like a warning or a threat.

For end-arounds, quarterback keepers, punt returns, fumbles, long bombs, interference calls and every other element of the game, the announcer never let us down. For each play, there was a slight raising of the penultimate syllable, and he used that warning tone throughout the entire ga-ame.

Ben and I clearly inferred the warning tone. Otherwise, having crossed the state line, we may simply have been uninformed about standard west Texas dialect-itis.

We thought the only legitimate warning would come with two minutes left in the first and second halves, but as coach Art Abreu, himself a weekend sports announcer, informed me today, there is no two-minute warning in high school or college. That warning is only for the pros. We’re thankful for tha-at, as a warning tone on top of a two-minute warning might be more than we could endu-ure.

Some good came from listening to the blue-jeans-clad P.A. Guy. We heard his main occupation is that of a minister of the gospel. Now imagine how he could discourage people from rushing into marriage.

Let’s say a couple of teens are getting hitched, much to the consternation of their parents. Well, the Rev. P.A. Guy might get them to rethink their plans by simply asking, “Why-eye do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded bri-ide?” And how would the bri-ide answer about the groo-oom?