“Please spell your last name for the court reporter.”
It is my first day on the job, a per diem assignment
replacing a woman purportedly skiing in Colorado.
My hands fly over the keys. Please
spell your last name for the court reporter, I write.
I have trained for almost four years for this. I feel good, I feel ready. My hands, poised mid-air, await the man’s
last name.
The man on the stand begins to speak. “P-R-Z-Y-J—“
Wait, what?
WHAT?!
P-R-Z-Y-J-what?!
I look up in time to see Diane, a fellow reporter, in the
very back of the room. Our eyes meet and
she grins, lifting her cup of coffee.
Welcome to court
reporting!
Frozen. I am
frozen. My hands remain over the
keyboard, mid-air. I feel my mouth go
dry. I’m pretty sure that I can feel my
pupils dilate.
I have never heard those letters, in that order, in my
life.
O, Wisconsin, you little Polish-immigrant state you.
None of this was covered in school, where we took mock
testimony from Mr. Ronald Peterson and Mr. Jose Garcia. I curse inwardly as the name of the man on
the stand goes on for what seems like an alphabet worth, ending, eventually, in
“ski”.
Panicked, I write:
SOMETHING-SKI. HIS NAME IS TODD
SOMETHING-SKI. HOLY BUCKETS SPEAK TO
CLERK OF COURT IMMEDIATELY.
The next 20 minutes are a blur. My confidence shattered,
I am ready to weep. The integrity of the
verbatim report has been compromised.
I drop my head, close my eyes, and focus on the speakers
with the grim intensity I normally reserve for reclaiming overflowing toilets
and cleaning up after vomiting children.
At the end of it, I open my eyes, sweaty and shaken. The attorneys are packing up, the judge is
gone, the Clerk is gone – and Diane is in front of me.
She hands me a scrap of paper with a name written on
it. “Przyjcymski,” she says. “It’s a common name around here.”
I take the paper gratefully.
My first friend in the court system grins at me. “You a drinkin’ gal, Pearl?”
And I allow that I could be talked into a drink,
maybe.
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26 comments:
Extra funny!
Surprisingly enough, Przyjcymski was going to be my pen name, but then the self-publishing firm was going to charge me extra, so I decided against it.
West side of the state, right? I could never even pronounce, let alone spell those names.
Hari OM
Remembering this, does it help with adjustment to the current 'new' job? And does the being persuaded to imbibe help further??!!!
I know that without either, we wouldn't be getting such entertainment... YAM xx
Back when notes for charts and records were dictated onto tape, and the transcriptions department would type them up, I used to make up words, just for fun.
Hey...you only had to type it once...that poor guy is stuck with it for life.
Way back when I was in school working part time in retail, a regular customer came in to pick up a layaway. I couldn't remember her name, and thought I'd finesse my way through it by asking her how to spell her last name because, "I know it's a tricky spelling." She looked at me carefully and then slowly spelled out, "J-O-N-E-S".
Why waste a perfectly good vowel in the middle of all that.
They're all Polish around here, except the Irish, and even the ones named Johnston claim to be Polish. I quit paying attention. Fortunately, it's not part of my job.
Haha! They need to buy a vowel or maybe two! :D
Panic, I know it well 😏
Good name for a cocktail...
With a first day like that, things could only get better!
If you weren't a drinkin girl, you quickly became one!!
One of my kids' elementary school teachers shortened her name to Przyjemski after many students went insane.
And it's probably pronounced something like Precious. A friend's Polish is spelled with lots of Zs (not the sleepy kind) and sounds nothing like it looks. You've earned that drink.
Messing up a court reporters ability to transcribe my testimony never stopped a fine or kept me out of jail;unfortunately.
Ouch. And I wonder which of the name 'we' consider common pose similar challenges for Mr P?
I went to school with a lot of folks whose names ended in "ski" and was smug in the knowledge that MY name was so normal....then I married an Italian. I swear it took me three years to figure out how to spell it.
Hah! My own maiden name starts with PRZYB and ends in SKI.
I was rather glad to be rid of that mouthful when I married.
One of my first exec assistant moments was some guy calling for my boss, who was in a meeting and the guy saying it was very important he call him immediately after the meeting and said his name and abruptly hung up. And it was a name that sounded to me like "bakamemaneoacakaeiagpaleao" or might as well have. No idea what it was and he didn't bother giving a number as I assume he and boss were well known to each other. The terror of that moment and running around the other asssistants going "Do you know of anyone important with a name that sounds like gibberish?". I understand your terror Miss P. :)
Oh wow--well done then.
On a related note, sometimes when I have a complex name like that and someone just starts spelling the word, I have to stop them. If I can't see it written first, I want to hear it a couple of times or I am prone to mistakes just writing the letters.
That Diane is a good friend Pearl! I hope you bought her a drink ... perhaps a G and T?
It makes you wonder why they didn't just change their name to Perkins. Their children would thank them.
Great story and perfectly told. My stomach immediately went into knots along with yours. (But sooo funny!)
What type of name is "Przyjcymski" some strange type of name thats for sure
11 letters? F that noise.
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