Missed Notes
by Andy Ross

"The brat sizzled on the grill." The macabre ending to a Brothers Grimm tale, or a delicious evening in the park? It depends on your pronunciation. And, that, in turn, depends upon where you grew up.

I grew up in southwestern Wisconsin, which is as idyllic and pastoral as it gets. Lawn sprinklers run in slow motion to maximize the prisms that flitter across laughing children's faces. The entire town shows up for the Cheese Days parade, in which pony-tailed Pork Princesses wave with white satin gloves. It's where giant men atop giant tractors wave to little old ladies on county roads. It's where everyone knows how to properly pronounce the word brat.

Here's a quick tutorial for those of you whose harsh urban lives are filled with jarring, nasal vowel sounds. It's not pronounced "brat" like "hat," "bat" or "cat." It's "brat" like "cot," "dot" or "swat." Despite the masculinity inherent in its shape and association with tailgating, brat is a delicate word, like bra. It rolls off the tongue, perhaps because it's still too hot from the grill. "I bought a hot brat," not "I had a bad brat." Follow?

Also, don't say "-wurst." Calling it "bratwurst" is like calling a friend by his full name. "Hey, Timothy Robert McNally, I've haven't seen you since you and Catherine Anne Underwood-Haynes did that keg stand at William Jonathan Brinkley's party." The only person who should call it "bratwurst" is its angry mother.

Hearing "brat" mispronounced is like hearing a missed note in a familiar melody. No, it's more than that. It's like hearing the strained squeak of a flat oboe. Pep band is no place for a diminished seventh, let alone an oboe.

There were three memorable moments in my life where I heard "brat" mispronounced, and each one sent a chill down my spine. Each put me on a path of discovery.

In a taped promo for Madison's CBS affiliate, David Letterman mispronounced "brat." Nonchalantly, he leaned towards the camera from behind his desk and said a bunch of stuff, and then there it is: "brat." "Brat" like "drat," "flat," "scat." He must have been kidding right? There are those times that you don't know with Letterman. That's what makes him so funny, like he'll pretend he's never heard of the movie his guest is in, or he'll ask someone in the audience to define what exactly lace is. I had always thought Letterman to be omniscient, feigning innocence in service of a joke. But, after a few airings of the promo, the station broke it up and added a voiceover. Dave would say "brat," they'd cut in with a white screen and an announcer would say, "Brat, Dave? C'mon." Holy crap, maybe he really didn't know how to say brat. I mean, the station must have called and asked right after they got the tape, right? Right? Or, maybe they didn't. Of course they didn't. They didn't get the joke that Dave was telling just for me. It was a humorous jolt, like nails dragged quickly across the comedy chalkboard. That had to be it.

The second time I had heard "brat" mispronounced was harder to brush aside. It was during the movie Dave. Now, I like Dave. It has that part where Kevin Kline is in the shower singing "Hail to the Chief" with wrong words. That's good stuff. But, then there is this one horrifying scene, in which he's trying to convince Charles Grodin to help him balance the budget by offering to bring in snacks. Back and forth, they repeatedly mispronounce the word brat. Not only "brat" like "hat," but they added the "-wurst" to it. "Blah blah blah, can you send in some bratwurst? Bratwurst? I love bratwurst." Over and over again. It's the worst. Obviously you don't love it, Mr. Grodin, if you're willing to hurt it like that. These are the people pretending to be the people pretending to run our government for God's sake. Can you imagine someone in the Oval Office so blatantly unable to pronounce to simplest of words? Our country would be in shambles — the economy, stability in the Middle East, world opinion of the U.S. would all go down the crapper.

Does it have something to do with the name Dave? David Schwimmer is from Chicago, yet I've never heard him say the word brat, properly or otherwise. Maybe it's because he's too nervous to try. Pussy.

The third time I heard "brat" mispronounced was the real kicker. Every year, my parents held a huge picnic at our house for the Optimists. The Optimist Club is a nonprofit organization, like the Kiwanis, Rotary or the Lion's Club, where secular charity work is mixed with business networking. This picnic, along with cooking cheese curds at the county fair, allowed my dad membership without having to go to any early-morning meetings. (My mom was in Kiwanis, selling brats at a competing tent at the fair.) It was in my backyard that dozens of people scooped up pasta salad and decided between burgers and brats.

Every year, there would be new faces. The organization was a good way for professionals new to town to meet people. One year, a new face, one of the many young interns that came to the clinic each fall, talked to me. I don't remember his name, but for now let's call him Doctor Davidson. He was a young, pale Virginian with brown hair swept to the side, overly polite even to a sullen teen.

"Our barbecues were all fried chicken and biscuits. I can't wait to try one of these brats [the incorrect way]."

"Um, yeah, it's brat [the correct way]."

Something about the way I corrected him suggested he had broken the most taboo of all taboos. I was bookish and pudgy and therefore had no practice at the sneer of superiority mastered by the popular kids. But, I could approximate it. The young doc seemed suddenly embarrassed and nervous, losing whatever courage he had built up to meet and remember a hundred new faces. I assume he wasn't a confident surgeon, but maybe a radiologist unused to people. He moved on, broken. I saw him later balancing a paper plate on his lap accosted by old ladies with enormous earrings. He seemed too nervous to approach the jovial men in madras shirts, who surely would have taken him under their wings and offered invitations to go curling.

Guilt? Oh, you bet. I knew what he was going through; I, too, had sat broken-spirited, surrounded by old ladies whose questions felt like an assault I was too weak to fight off. Why did I have to make it such a big deal that he'd mispronounced a single word? Sure, hearing it the wrong way gave me physical, searing pain, but he didn't do it on purpose. He was just making conversation. On top of that, I realized I had probably mispronounced a thousand words. Kay-nish? Nish? Niche? No, it's knish. My version of chowder would feel like a kick to the perineum to a Bostonian. We are all outsiders somewhere.

The point is that community is united around the details. Major social structures like religion and class change over time, and often do more to separate than unite. Community is truly bonded by the little things, like pronunciation. And those tiny bonds can be taught and shared. I easily could have brought that doctor into the warm and meaty embrace of the Midwest. And, I could forgive the Daves of the world. I'm not saying it's OK to go around mispronouncing "brat" or calling it "bratwurst," but it is OK to make a mistake. Once. Do it twice and you're getting pasta salad in your lap.

E-mail Andy Ross at apross@earthlink.net.

— graphic by Alison Paddock (arpdesigns@hotmail.com)