Coprolalia

My son was home sick today after having woken up with a 100 degree fever. And while I tried to move as many meetings as I could to accommodate, I couldn’t completely take the day off. My wife went to work, so that meant Troy and I had to figure out how to play and work together.

We did all right for the most part, at least until my afternoon meeting with other members of the leadership team. Troy was in my office reading a book about farm animals. He was completely engrossed and entertained, which was perfect since I had to occasionally talk on my call. I got to one of those times, came off mute, and started to explain the process of evaluations for the integrations team. When all of a sudden, Troy starts yelling out farm animals at the top of his lungs. Now, I’ve learned that toddlers really only have two volumes, so there’s no asking him to say it quieter. It’s either completely off or full volume.

This is what was heard through my phone: “So, we started out...COW...by evaluating who has not...PIG...had a raise in a while...GOAT...and then we added...SHEEP...those to the list that...DONKEY...have been performing above and beyond...HORSE. Then, we ranked them...TRACTOR...by priority of needing...CHICKEN...to occur first.”

The sad part is that I just kept talking right on through it, so used to it that it didn’t even phase me. But I imagine the people on the call thinking that I have some “clean” (or maybe “farm”) form of Coprolalia, which is the involuntary utterance of obscene or inappropriate words, often associated with Tourette’s. I guess I’m glad that it was an internal call rather than customer-facing, although that might have definitely livened it up a little!