Early Autumn 2009
Teller shut the refrigerator and plopped onto the couch. He took the first swig before locating the remote between the cushions. “The beer that made Mel Famie walk us.” The punchline made him chuckle, even after so many years. Sometime in the 1970s, his linguistics professor (the first one) spun ten looong minutes of yarn in class because, well, he hadn’t prepared fifty minutes of lecture. Fifty years of experience later, Teller could definitely relate.
The condensed version of the joke went like this. Mel Famie was the most feared pitcher of his era – 3,500 strikeouts, a nasty cutter, and a lifetime ERA of 2.26. But like many feared players – Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Hank Wilson – Mel Famie had a drinking problem and was known to imbibe in the dugout. The regular season wound down and his rivals, the lowly Brewers, were within two games of making the postseason. A three-day home stand against Mel Famie and the visiting Pirates would decide the division title.
The Pirates played hard, but the Brewers won the first two games. Everything rode on the final game of the regular season. It proved a nail-biter: score tied, bottom of the ninth. Mel Famie returned to the mound and began strong, fastball clocking 96+. Three pitches in, the right fielder and first baseman collided while fielding a routine blooper. Five pitches in, Famie bobbled a pop single. As feared a leftie as he was, no one feared his right. The next two batters retired quietly. The shortstop fouled off six pitches then delivered a clean line drive to shallow left. The hometown crowd went crazy. The networks couldn’t hear themselves announce the pinch hitter – a solid bunter but lifetime .198 against Famie. The oddsmakers bet overwhelmingly on extra innings.
Mel somehow crumbled. His first cutter missed wildly. His next three attempts were worse. The legend wiped his forehead with his gloved arm, trudged to the dugout, picked up the twelfth and last Schlitz the ground screw slipped him, and slumped on the bench in resignation. A jubilant Brewer batboy noticed Mel, pointed to the can, and shouted, “Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous, and the beer that made Mel Famie walk us.” “True story,” his professor declared, then left the classroom. Most of the students believed him.
Six weeks into his tenure at a converted warehouse in downtown Albany, Teller still could not share jokes with his colleagues. The polite half confused basic baseball concepts so badly it was pointless to continue. The impolite half wandered off within five seconds, the average attention span of high-tech workers. Mostly, employees avoided the “Professor”. Their mission, after all, was to make real-life educators obsolete.
A grant from the National Science Foundation and Sami d’Hein’s cashout from his previous venture were enough to prototype their vision. Teller’s role was to ensure the online ESL course met rigorous academic standards. He hadn’t bargained for add-on courses in 25 other languages, nor courses between those languages – as, for example, between Sami’s native Turkish and his co-founder’s native German. Sami’s partner was a grad student in Sami’s IT department at Rensselaer Polytechnic. Sami received tenure because he helped invent PASSWIZ. The mere thought made the “Professor” nauseous.
Fitting French surname name, Teller mused: Hein. Loosely translated, Hein meant Huh? Sami d’Hein traced his surname to French occupation of the Anatolian port city of Mersin during the Franco-Turkish War. The troops left before Sami’s grandfather was born, but “Hein?” was the lieutenant’s answer when the Provost Gendarmerie demanded his papers and escorted him rudely back to camp. The lieutenant preferred full-dress uniform when courting, which impressed Sami’s great grandmother (and the lieutenant’s other mistresses) so greatly that she prefaced her future son’s surname with d’ to attest his aristocratic lineage, as, for example, Ludwig von Ahnungslos or Esteban de Contabilidad.
To be fair, at least Sami had a name. Teller’s employer did not. His paychecks were signed by Platzhalter Corp. and financially legitimate, but the name was an inside joke. Platzhalter meant Placeholder, as in Intentionally Left Blank. Sami, Anton, and the team worked for months on content and interface but hadn’t spent a nickel (Teller exaggerated) on branding.
Teller flipped through the channels – the usual afternoon garbage. He slowed for McHale’s Navy and The Munsters but finished his beer with Hanna-Barbera. Huckleberry Hound wore a spacesuit, hummed Oh, My Darling, winked at the audience, then faded. Teller fetched a second Schlitz from the refrigerator. Two remained. He remembered the brand’s admonition: “When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer.” He made a mental note to purchase more.
The commercials ended, and a hand reached behind Forest Ranger Smith to purloin his lunch – two slices of white bread concealing something presumably scrumptious, and a thermos of liquid – regrettably not Schlitz. Two animated bears scampered away upright as fast as their hind legs could carry them – upper bodies uncannily still.
Teller did not remain for the dialog. He jumped from the couch, pulled the Langenscheidt English-Turkish dictionary from the shelf, and began riffling through the M’s. There it was, exactly as anticipated. Çok meant multi, Dilli meant lingual, and Çoki rhymed perfectly with Yogi. Teller gargled mouthwash, grabbed his jacket and a handful of crayons, then squeezed into his aging sub-compact. He sped eighty minutes south on the interstate. It was still there, just off 87, in the middle of God-forsaken nowhere: Jellystone Park Campsite! He remembered it when he scouted around Kingston for an apartment, thinking he could somehow commute to Albany.
Rookie mistake, he conceded. A rookie mistake at sixty.
There was no mistake this time. Teller sought out the snack bar, ordered a basket of corn dogs and chicken tenders and “There!” lining the bottom of his basket, were animated images of Yogi Bear and his amorphous dwarf bear sidekick, Boo Boo. Teller rushed to a table, pulled the crayons from his coat, and set to work.
He presented his masterwork to Sami and Anton the following morning. For the first time he could remember, Anton and Sami concurred – not only among themselves, but with him. They even smiled. Henceforth, the enterprise would be Çok Dilli Corporation, and its mascot and online spokes “person” would be Çok Dilli Bear, or Çoki for short – an amorphous pink dwarf bear with a feathered green boa and green headscarf (or hijab) – all purposely ambiguous. Its preferred pronouns were she and her.
The company waitlisted 300,000 beta testers before launch, another 500,000 once it went live. The bear and her courses were a hit. Everyone wanted a piece of the Çok Dilli juggernaut.
