Cover your ears—the language is NSFW.
June 1995
This Lesson Is Brought to You By the Letters I, N and G
When Ev first started working for me, I was just under 40 and she was just over 20. Sometimes she acted older. Sometimes… not.
I had worked out a sweet deal with the local schools. At the end of the year, students clear out their lockers. Anything left behind is taken to the office and the student in question has one week to pick up or make arrangements. After that, the salvageable items are sent to charity, and the non-school issued books are boxed up and yours truly takes them off their hands for ten bucks a box. No sorting, no peeking. All or nothing. I usually wound up with enough good stuff to consider it worthwhile, the schools were grateful—and the contents could sometimes be amusing.
It's universal that kids bitch about being in school but when they have nothing else to do… 'Where do you wanna go?' 'I dunno, let's hang out at the school.' (Anywhere but home. Mom might come up with some chores.)
So Ev was with me at Charles G. Conover Junior-Senior High to pick up boxes. The district was kind enough to have them all sent to the school with the largest storage area and I was incredibly grateful for not having to schlep all around town. We were parked by the maintenance building, near the lower level playground. A crew of sloppy-looking almost-JDs were hanging around the basketball court, halfheartedly throwing balls through netless hoops and carrying on such sparking conversation as, 'I fuckin' told the shithead don't fuck with me, I'm not fuckin' kidding, so he fuckin' tells me no fuckin' way—" On and on they went, each worse than the last. Noun, verb, adjective, adverb—I think I heard a split infinitive in there, too.
I'm no shrinking violet. Neither is Ev. But, come on; there are a couple of hundred thousand words in the English language. Stop harping on one.
As we stacked the last boxes in my used-but-new-to-me Land Rover, Evelyn muttered, "I counted forty-seven."
"Rats. I missed some, I only heard forty-three."
Ev shoved the box in and slammed the gate—and marched over to the edge of the court. She had only been working for me for a year, and I already knew her well enough to think, Oh, crap, what is she going to do now? "Young sirs!" Great. Lady Evelyn has left the faire and is coming out to play.
The leader of the group, a smarmy looking, 12-or-13-year-old lanky kid with greasy, mutt brown hair—complete with half-mast jeans and an obscene t-shirt—pointed to himself. Who, me?
"Yes, you!" she called imperiously. He shambled a little closer—but not close enough that she could be a danger to him. "Your pronunciation is appalling! Read the word—there is an I-N-G at the end, not just I-N. It's pronounced ING, not IN,' she said with a near-sneer as she over-enunciated. "'Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines!'"
"Hamlet," I muttered, scuttling for the driver's door.
"What are you talkin' 'bout?" the boy said in disbelief.
"Talking! About! Good grief, use the full word!" Ev threw her arms wide. "FuckING! FuckING!" she bellowed. (The custodian on the football field on the other end of the level turned and stared. Ev has played in the SCA and other groups for years. She can project.) "Pronounce your words properly, for all they are worth!" She sailed regally to the door, hopped in and pointed toward the open gate in the chain link fence. "Let us proceed!"
"With all due haste." I gunned the engine. "God knows if any of those thugs are packin'."
Ev sighed. "PackING," she corrected. "PackING."