On The Military Alphabet

Story #1:

Ok, so I have recently changed my last name to my new married name. I have heard that this process is a huge pain in the arse, but no one prepared me for the amount of time that I have been on the phone with customer service representatives. I have realized that I just do not have the patience to listen to the automated robot that will filter me to the correct representative. I just want to speak to a human.

Before I call each customer service number, I have to pull up the military alphabet on wikipedia so that I can properly spell my new last name without sounding like an idiot when I try to spell my last name using words.

I have this complex that whenever I am trying to spell something to someone over the phone that I panic and CAN'T THINK OF ANY WORD IN THE WORLD THAT BEGINS WITH THE LETTER "S". EVER. I sound like "S as in........" and for some reason guys, I sometimes can only think of dirty words! Like my brain is just trying to be funny in my moment of vulnerability.

So my solution to my panic is to pull up the military alphabet and correctly spell my new last name like this (I have it memorized from doing it so many times!):

S as in Sierra

A as in Alpha

U as in Uniform

N as in November

D as in Delta

E as in Echo

R as in Romeo

S as in Sierra

Simple. Beautiful.

The other day I was lucky enough to speak to the most creative and hilarious human customer service representative who threw me for a total loop. I said my new last name and she decided to spell it back to me for verification. I wrote down what she said because I got a total kick out of this creative cat.

S as in Samoa girl scout cookie

A as in Armpit hair

U as in Under the boardwalk, down by the sea

N as in Nemo from Finding Nemo

D as in Dump trucks

E as in Earwax

R as in Rumplestiltskin

S as in Sorry Miss Jackson, I am for real.

I was hysterical by the time she got to Nemo. When she finished spelling my name she was giggling too and I said "Ma'am, you just made my day and you're the most creative person I have ever talked to." She laughed and said it had been a long day and her shift ended in 10 minutes. You're in the wrong profession, Jessica from Ohio.

Story #2:

Nick and I are flying together in a few days and when I pulled up the reservation today I noticed that our not next to each other (after we originally picked seats next to each other when we bought the tickets.) I called the airline because hubs was home sick with a nasty cold that I so nicely gave him. When I asked the customer service representative to reassign our seats she said "NO CAN DO" and gave me a bunch of reasons why she couldn't fix it, I gave in and hung up. I called the hubs and he decided to call and give it a try.

Well his customer service representative was a lot more pleasant and immediately reassigned our seats to next to each other. She then asked for his last name and for him to verify the spelling. Nick began to spell out our last name using the military alphabet the best he could. He got to the letter "U" and couldn't think of any word in the entire world that began with "U" so he TOTALLY panicked. He finally just gave up trying to spell our last name using words and just said "U. N. D. E. R. S. Saunders like Saunders. Sorry, I need to work on my Greek alphabet."

The customer service agent said: "I think you mean military alphabet."

A dear, sweet, mortified little Nick said: "Yep. That too!"

The conversation ended and allegedly we are sitting next to each other on our next flight.

Highlight the text after the star to reveal which story is true * The true story is story number two. It is true that Nick mistakenly confused the military alphabet with the Greek alphabet in a moment of fluster! Of course he knows the difference between the two and did not use a sigma or an epsilon when spelling our name! Rest assured friends, I have been working on "U" words with Nick for next time he is in a pinch.