'F' as in Freak

My new job requires a lot of phone work. And with phone work comes a lot of spelling via the 'N as in Nancy' method. People l-o-v-e doing this whereas I have always avoided it. I can understand using it to distinguish between similar sounding letters like N and M or S and F. But some people use it for every letter and suddenly a task that should take a few moments ends up taking a few longer moments.

But that isn't the only reason I'm reluctant to join in. The real reason is that I'm afraid I'm going to make a truly bizarre association and the other person is going to have some frightening insight into my inner self.

Its like everyday free association at the office!

To avoid this, I could just stick to the name associations. The 'N as in Nancy, F as in Fred' example. But, for some reason, by brain won't let me.

For instance, today I spelled my name for a particularly hard-of-hearing old lady as follows:

E as in Elongate
R as in Roadrunner
I as in Igloo
N as in Never

And although I am prone to exaggeration, this is not one. The exchange beyond that went something like this:

Old Lady: Did you say Rosemary?
Me: Rosemary?
Old Lady: No my name is Elaine. Is your name Rosemary?
Me: Huh? Oh, no. I said Roadrunner. (pause) R as in Roadrunner.
Old Lady: Rose Runner?
Me: No. ROADRUNNER. R as in ROADRUNNER.
Old Lady: What's a roadrunner?

I honestly didn't know what to say to that. By the time we were finished, I think she thought my name was Eroadrunnern.

Another example occurred when I tried to figure out if a heavily-accented man had a 'J' or a soft 'G' in his name. So, I said:

J as in JellyBelly or G as in Gerrymandering?

That conversation continued to deteriorate until it finally ended, at which point he had learned what gerrymandering meant and I was craving JellyBellies. But I still don't know if it was a J or a soft G.

Like most things, this neurosis of mine goes back to kindergarten.

One day, we had to go around the room and say 'My name is _____ and I am _____' using an adjective that started with the same letter as the first letter in our name.

I said 'My name is Erin and I am Erotic.'

My teacher's eyebrows flew up and she tried to get me to change it to Energetic.

But I stuck to my guns and kept erotic.

Hopefully it won't be as bad as that...but today was bad enough. I'm really worried about the day when I'm just a bit titchy and say something like 'P as in Pneumonia.'

Or just days like today when I inexplicably say 'R as in Roadrunner.'

You know...Roadrunner.

That's R as in River
O as in Ornery
A as in Antelope
D as in Dead
R as in Rope
U as in Ubiquitous
N as in Narcolepsy
N as in Nighttime
E as in Entourage
R as in Rivulets.