I remember I was at a press conference where somebody came up to me with absolute confidence, like he knew me forever, and whispered in my ear, 'You should sing a song now. The Indian audience will enjoy it. Your songs will improve India and Pakistan's relations.' I clarified to him that I wasn't Ali Zafar.
The first sign that I'd been unknowingly affected by cooking shows occurred on a Sunday morning when I realized I was talking to myself. I'd been making toast. 'First, we cut our bread,' I whispered. 'Do you know why?' I stopped what I was doing and looked up. 'Let me tell you why.'
No weather forecaster can tell you for sure when to wear a rain slicker, stock up on canned goods, or evacuate a city that's in a cyclone's path. All forecasters can offer is their best guess at the atmosphere of the future, whispered by the simulated blue marble and wrapped up in uncertainty.
Because I trained in theater, I always leave a film shoot feeling like I haven't done anything, like I just sat in front of the camera and whispered, essentially.
One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby DMV office to get my driver's permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. 'This is fake,' she whispered. 'Don't come back here again.'
My hat was pulled down and this girl said 'Are you really him?' I whispered 'Yeah, I'm really him.' She screamed, 'Mom! Dad! It's Heath Ledger!
For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.
At a meet and greet in a nightclub in Texas, a girl who looked about 15 years old gave me a VHS copy of 'Adventures in Babysitting,' and she whispered in my ear that it's really just home movie footage of her dad practicing judo.
In the early nineties, I was a cub reporter on a city newspaper in Limerick, and assigned to the courthouse there. One day, an old detective sergeant came and whispered to me in the press pit. He pointed out a young offender, a teenager who was up for stealing a car or something relatively minor, and said, 'See this kid? He'll kill.'
Mansa Musa never spoke in public, and whispered everything to an interpreter; he was also never allowed to be seen eating a meal.
