By Walter Agnew Moore II,

So I'm sitting there with my mom complaining about somebody on the TV news mumbling with that put-on "I'm-just-a-dumb-southerner-I-don't-know-nothin'"
ying-yang voice, and she says:

"When you were a baby, I got so tired of not being able to understand the kids I taught in Columbus, Georgia, that I made them put pebbles in their mouths."

"You made 'em put pebbles in their mouths?"

"Yeah," she says and hunches up on the couch. "You know that Greek, oh what's his name, he had a speech defect, so he'd practice giving orations with pebbles in his mouth, standing there by the ocean yelling out over the roaring of the waves?"

"The roaring of the waves?"

"Yeah. Built up his lungs. So anyway I told them I wanted them to do that, but we didn't use pebbles, I had them bring marbles to class."

"How did they take it?" I said.

"Oh they liked it. We practiced speaking clearly with the marbles in our mouths. It went fine until one girl swallowed her marble. I liked to got in trouble with that, we had some parent-teacher conferences, you bet."

"I bet you did."

"She was a frail little thing. Her daddy was a Colonel. He was going on all about that marble in our parent-teacher conference, I just had to sit there."

"He didn't appreciate your Classical education."

"No. But the next parent, he was a doctor. I told him, and he thought it was kind of funny."