Reciting the Alphabet Backwards

Last Sunday I watched the National Football Conference championship game at my neighbor’s house. He had also invited two friends over who live on Marine Drive, Jerry and Marilyn. Jerry is a great storyteller. Marilyn has a talent I didn’t know about.

During a commercial break we started talking about cops and driving, in part because of the recent snowstorm. Years ago a man Jerry worked with got pulled over late at night on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. The story goes that as part of a field sobriety test, the officer told him to recite the alphabet backwards. I have since done a quick search on the Internet and read that cops rarely do this. But why let that detail get in the way?

Anyway, the man wanted no part of the drill. “Forget it,” he told the cop. “Write me up if you want, but I’m not even going to try. I wouldn’t get past ‘Z’.” The officer did and the case later went to court. I don’t have the details on how he beat the charge, but it was for reasons having nothing to do with the alphabet.

My neighbor, Jerry, and I looked at each other wondering how we might have fared in a similar situation. Then Marilyn spoke up. “I can do it,” she said. And she did, all the way through from Z to A at a quick pace without missing or mixing up a letter.

If you haven’t heard someone do this, it’s weird. You’ll recognize the letters of course (this is the alphabet we are talking about), but saying them in reverse order makes it sound like a strange chant in a language that is a dialect or two removed from English. Stopping to think about the next letter ruins the effect. It has to be done quickly.

I have no idea how Marilyn taught herself to recite the alphabet backwards or whether she says it aloud occasionally to maintain her skill. I did find a blog entry that offered a proven technique for learning to recite the alphabet backwards in less than 5 seconds. “Only a few hours of practice” the page’s introduction says. It even explains how to make your delivery musical if you are so inclined. I decided to pass.

After Jerry and my neighbor failed on the first few letters, everyone looked at me. At that point I had consumed two diet cokes and a chili dog so I wasn’t under the “influence” of anything unless you count the mind-numbing number of commercials I had seen that day. I got as far as ‘W.’