I got tired of listening to my raspy voice. If I’m tired of listening to my raspy voice, I thought, what about the poor people listening who are not me? Have you ever just wanted to crawl under the chair to get away from a raspy-voiced friend? We won’t get into the whiny voice or the squeaky voice or the 100-decibel voice right now; they are somebody else’s problem.
“Think of it as sexy, mom,” my daughter said. This from a kid who never even heard Lauren Bacall (Google her) seducing Humphrey Bogart (likewise.) I do not, however, sound like Lauren Bacall. More like a slug calling for help because she’s stuck on a piece of sandpaper. I think I would not get far with a phone porn career.
So I turned to my old friends at Kaiser. There was thumping and testing and X-raying and an excess, in my opinion, of references to my Smoker’s Lungs. Smoker’s Lungs, 58 years after I quit smoking? Well, sorry people, once a smoker, forever a wearer of that scarlet SL tattooed onto your chest. Pulmonologists know.
Thereafter, I visited with the pleasant young ENT guy, who gave me a crash course in Vocal Chords 101 before slipping a camera down for a video of my vocal chords in action. There are repulsive videos and repulsive videos, but I promise you there is nothing more repulsive than a video of your vocal chords from the inside. While we were reviewing the demo Vimeo – I guess repulsive videos are just another day at the office for ENT people – there was further review of the essential message of Vocal Chords 101: your vocal chords are nothing but a couple of muscles. Mine are, shall we say, no longer young.
“The word you are trying to avoid using,” I remarked to Doctor ENT, “is ‘flabby.’”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” he said. But I could see into his soul.
“You can’t reverse the aging process,” he said, somewhat un-gallantly; “but you can make things better!” Whereupon he set me up with a stern-voiced vocal therapist. She was utterly no-nonsense. “Do these exercises” – think warming up for the church choir – “for 20 minutes, three times a day.” An hour a day? When I can’t find 5 minutes to check the #%+&* Instagram feed? And anyway, the church choir definitely does not want me back.
I’m going to think of it as sexy.