W.A. Spooner was an English clergyman noted for accidentally transposing sounds within words and phrases. An example of a Spoonerism is when you say crooks and nannies when you intended to say nooks and crannies. The writing challenge was to use a pair of Spoonerisms as bookends for a timed writing by starting the writing with one, and then ending it with the other. This delightful story by Jesse Goldberg-Strassler, radio announcer for the Lansing Lugnuts minor league baseball team, was the result of this exercise.

Because of a pack of lies, I met my wife.

It was at a bakery, the aroma of fresh bread canceling out the depressing gray skies and driving rain outside. A woman stepped in from the dankness, pulling down her hood and wrestling miserably to close a defeated umbrella. “I need three pies,” she said to the man behind the counter. “Three lemon meringue pies of your highest order.”

And because she had the sort of face you didn’t turn down, even with raindrops still dripping down her cheeks, the man behind the counter gave her a winning smile and said, “Most certainly.” Off he went, through the doors behind the counter, into the kitchen area, and there he made a call. “Three lemon meringue pies,” he said over the phone. “We’re all out in the shop, but there’s no way I’m telling this customer no.”

At the other end of the phone was me.

“Really?” I said.

“Really,” said my roommate. “Now bake the three best lemon meringue pies you’ve ever made and sneak them in the back.” He hung up the phone and, as I found out later, delayed the customer expertly with jokes, descriptions of how good the pies would be, and assorted probing questions of a personal fashion.

It might’ve worked, too, except I was intrigued and impulsively came in through the front door instead of the back. That led to conversation, which led to a cooking sort of date, which led — in two years time — to a ring.

All because of a lack of pies.

©2014 Jesse Goldberg Strassler

No tags