Do You Live in Cyhoga County, Ohio?

I was on the phone trying to get a better deal on my home insurance when the man on the other end started rattling off strange words. He was from Texas and wanted to know if I lived in any of the Ohio counties he was listing. 

First of all, as he was checking off the counties, I wondered, “What do all these have in common? Are they all flood-prone, are they all part of some Appalachian discount program, do they all have coal mines in them that people have built precarious houses on?”

But soon I stopped listening for my county and became distracted. His pronunciations of the counties, often based on Native American words, were atrocious. He sounded out Tuscarawas County as Tiswas, Coschocton was mutilated to Cushton, Guernsey became Gwerney, Scioto became Skyto. I’d never realized how many exotic counties Ohio has until he ruined their names. He apologized and said, “Sorry, I’m probably saying some of these wrong.” I didn’t trust myself to say a word.

I was tempted to laugh and sometimes wanted to correct him, but I decided with all the counties in the US, he’s not going to remember my corrections for longer than five seconds. And on top of that, what if he’s dyslexic? For a home insurance call, which can be so tedious and boring, he unknowingly made it memorable with his name butchering.