Op-Ed Columns

Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late
The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder
I'm an over-40 victim of fate
Arriving too late.

Been a long time since I looked at 40.

But I've always wanted to be a pirate.

OK, not a real pirate. Real pirates were a mean, nasty, bloody, vicious bunch with few redeemable social graces. They smelled bad. Their dental hygiene was poor. And their grammar was atrocious. Not the sort of folks you want your 15-year-old son to hang with, much less your 10-year-old daughter, but if you were one the kids wouldn't have much choice.

No, for their sake I'll stick to my current profession, such as it is.

Except on this Friday, Sept. 19. On that day, I won't be a pirate, but I can talk like one.

Who wants to talk like a pirate?

Lots of folks.

Which is what John Baur and Mark Summers discovered.

Talk about a success story: Here are two boys who went out and created something from nothing and sold it to willing consumers, who bought it for no reason other than the hell of it.

Baur and Summers took an idea that was not waiting to be found, something no one was looking for, much less needed, and turned it into a triumph — not of marketing, but of audacity and timing and dumb luck. And because it is what it is and because of what it became, this Baur-and-Summers creation offers old salts — real and wannabe — more fun than you would expect to have with your clothes on.

Which, when you get to be an old salt, is where your clothes should be.

What is this thing of wonder that has come to pass, you ask?

As I knew you would.

Why it's Talk Like A Pirate Day, you swab (that's pirate talk, but save it for Sept. 19).

Why Sept. 19?

Because that's Talk Like A Pirate Day. Aren't you listening?

Oh, you mean, why was Sept. 19 picked as the day to talk like a pirate?

Because that's Summers' ex-wife's birthday.

What else?

Many of you probably think this is silly. (You know who you are.) And, well, it is.

But I don't care. (One of the many less violent characteristics I share with pirates is aggressive ambivalence.) We all do things that are silly (ever wonder why men wear neckties?) and get less joy from the effort.

Talking like a pirate is fun.

"Arrrrrrr."

"Shiver me timbers."

"Prepare to be boarded" — the best "pick-up line" ever, according to Baur and Summers.

"If you'd have fought like a man, you wouldn't be hanging like a dog" — reportedly said by Anne Bonny, the great female pirate (yes, ladies, you too can take part).

What Baur and Summers did was take some banter at a racquetball game and turn it into a movement to establish a new national holiday. However, like most things thought of under similar conditions, this one got nowhere until Baur e-mailed Dave Barry — the columnist we lesser columnists long to be. Barry thought it was a great idea or needed something to fill the week's space (the jury is still out on that), so he wrote about it and the rest, as we say in my main profession, is history.

In the six years since Barry outed them, Baur and Summers — reinvented as Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket — have been on a roll.

What began as a couple of guys encouraging friends to talk like a pirate on one September day has grown — maybe not into a phenomena, but at least into something, which is more than anything that I (or you, likely) ever encouraged friends to do has grown into.

Around the country, indeed the world, on Sept. 19 small bands of people with better things to do will not be doing them and instead will be talking like a pirate.

Meanwhile, Slappy and Chumbucket have become celebrities. They have been interviewed by radio stations in Australia, Ireland and Cleveland — not to mention NPR. And with the help of their Webwench they have put together one of the best Web sites I have ever browsed (www.talklikeapirate.com).

They have even written books. I haven't read any, but I might.

Colleges students, who take to anything that stands even a remote chance of convincing parents and the public that education is the fartherest thing from their minds, are getting on board (as opposed to getting on the bandwagon — pirates don't do wagons).

Most significant, however, is that Talk Like A Pirate Day is now listed in the Chase Calendar of Events, which pretty much means that it is listed, so there.

For those of you who are not impressed by this, well, I hope someone comes up to you Friday and talks like a pirate.

Not that you deserve it.