Don’t use that tone of voice with me

Almost two weeks after return­ing to the world of work fol­low­ing the exten­ded period of reclus­ive isol­a­tion offered by the Christ­mas break, I am pleased to report that the Funny Voices have finally disappeared.

I should explain — because I can already sense that you’re slightly con­cerned about the state of my men­tal health — that I’ve not been hear­ing Funny Voices. No, it’s worse than that. Regret­tably, I have once again plumbed the depths of social embar­rass­ment that one only reaches by actu­ally speak­ing in Funny Voices.

The Funny Voice is yet another of those defence mech­an­isms that I fool­ishly employ to cope with my fre­quent shy­ness in social situ­ations. I’m sure I don’t need to go into details, because you’re all well aware of it by now thanks to fre­quent dis­cus­sions of the sub­ject on this site.

Oh, very well, then. Dry throat, sweaty palms, nervous and repet­it­ive hand-wringing, plus the meth­od­ical destruc­tion of pieces of paper or dis­pos­able cof­fee cups while attempt­ing the art of con­ver­sa­tion. Deep breath. Inab­il­ity to speak, inab­il­ity to make small talk, inab­il­ity to look any­one in the eye, ter­ri­fy­ing nervous­ness about approach­ing even the closest friends for a harm­less chat. Deeper breath. A desire for the ground to open up beneath my feet to allow me to plunge into its inky black­ness, thereby put­ting me and (I invari­ably assume) the other per­son out of our col­lect­ive sense of hideous social discomfort.

See, you remem­ber now. I knew you would.

So, where was I? Oh yes, I remem­ber. Funny Voices. I don’t know how it happened, but I can only assume that a few years ago some little corner of my warped mind held a case con­fer­ence with another little corner of my warped mind, and between them they decided to try and help me get over my hor­ror of many social situ­ations by send­ing sub­con­scious sig­nals telling me that speak­ing in a slightly comic voice would calm my nerves and make things seem so much bet­ter. As ideas go, I think it prob­ably ranks along­side approach­ing someone whilst wear­ing a pair of under­pants on one’s head.

Of course, I am exag­ger­at­ing slightly — and thank heav­ens for that small mercy. My Funny Voices aren’t in the same cringe­worthy league as those of the ste­reo­typ­ical Office Joker, an example of whom resides in every bland, grey, open-plan work­place across the land. I don’t do impres­sions of Frank Bruno, Frank Spen­cer or Frank Car­son. Believe me, if I did I would quite hap­pily lock myself in the sta­tion­ery cup­board and punch the indus­trial stapler through my tongue, before shoot­ing myself.

No, my Funny Voices are more like nervous, jit­tery exag­ger­a­tions of my own nat­ural vocal inflex­ions: too camp here, too affected there, too matey to him, too fawn­ing to her and — as the final act of over-compensating — just being too loud to every­one, thank you very much. Only very rarely will the full grand guignol exper­i­ence of what surely amounts to the Funny Voice ver­sion of Tourette’s dis­play itself in all its inap­pro­pri­ate glory. That is some­thing to be wit­nessed in all its real-life hor­ror, and no account in mere text can do it justice.

For­tu­nately, I am once again becom­ing used to the social whirl of, well, meet­ing people in cor­ridors and hav­ing a chat (and as basic as that sounds, it can be ter­ri­fy­ing for me). Hence the vocal eccent­ri­cit­ies are at last reced­ing, although I know the relief is prob­ably only tem­por­ary. All it needs is another attack of social-phobia and the Funny Voices will be back with a vengeance.

So if you should hap­pen to hear some­body say­ing “HELLOOOOOOOO!” to you in a ridicu­lously loud and unne­ces­sary man­ner, try not to be too startled, and maybe offer a greet­ing in return. It will work won­ders for put­ting me at my ease, and I might even man­age to reply in a sens­ible voice. No prom­ises, though.