Shiver me timbers, mateys – it’s International Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day!
How better to celebrate than to head on over to your near
est participating Long John Silvers and get yourself a Deep Fried Twinkie?
We first heard about Talk Like a Pirate Day back in 2002. But it turns out, its history stretches way back before the turn of the century.
The founders of this fun observance, The Pirate Guys, Ol’ Chumbucket and Cap’n Slappy (aka John Baur and Mark Summers) tell the tale of how the day came to be on their website, talklikeapirate.com.
“Once upon a time,” they write, “On June 6, 1995, to be precise – we were playing racquetball, not well but gamely.”
They continue:
It wasn’t our intention to become “the pirate guys.” Truth to tell, it wasn’t really our intention to become anything, except perhaps a tad thinner and healthier, and if you could see our photos, you’d know how THAT turned out. As we flailed away, we called out friendly encouragement to each other -“Damn, you bastard!” and “Oh, jeez, my hamstring!” for instance – as shots caromed away, unimpeded by our wildly swung rackets.
On this day, for reasons we still don’t quite understand, we started giving our encouragement in pirate slang. Mark suspects one of us might have been reaching for a low shot that, by pure chance, might have come off the wall at an unusually high rate of speed, and strained something best left unstrained. “Arrr!,” he might have said.
Who knows? It might have happened exactly that way.
Anyway, whoever let out the first “Arrr!” started something. One thing led to another. “That be a fine cannonade,” one said, to be followed by “Now watch as I fire a broadside straight into your yardarm!” and other such helpful phrases.
By the time our hour on the court was over, we realized that lapsing into pirate lingo had made the game more fun and the time pass more quickly. We decided then and there that what the world really needed was a new national holiday, Talk Like A Pirate Day.
The two celebrated in obscurity until, by happenstance, a friend of theirs stumble across Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry’s email address:
Except for one happy accident. One day in early 2002, John chanced upon Dave Barry’s e-mail address. As the entire universe knows, Dave Barry is a syndicated columnist and the author of somewhere between four and 6,000 books and the second funniest man in the universe. We were two guys (three if you count Brian, and that seems only fair,) but Dave (we call him Dave now, though he probably doesn’t know it. Mr. Barry would probably be more appropriate, but, well, you know.) anyway, Dave is like a whole parade with brass bands and elephants. We reasoned that Dave would be able to bring attention to Talk Like A Pirate Day in a way that Mark and John (and Brian) wouldn’t be able to if we lived to be 200. Ambition suddenly burned bright, and sending e-mails is a very easy thing to do. Which is why we finally got around to contacting him.
The first e-mail introduced us, and told him about our great idea — Talk Like a Pirate Day. We knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. Then we offered him the only thing we had, the chance to be official national spokesman for the event.
They were right, and soon the world would be introduced to International Talk Like A Pirate Day.
Here’s a quick tutorial by the original Pirate Guys on the five key phrases you need to know that will help you Talk Like A Pirate:
