It is a truth universally acknowledged that one should always treat a microphone as if it were on.  Joe Biden could use a little help on this point. Also, more recently, the U.K.’s beleaguered Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

One of the signature humiliations of my childhood involved an open mike. It was a Sunday morning service at the National Cathedral in Washington. I must have been nine or ten years old, swaddled in a suffocating robe and surplice up in the choir stalls near the altar.

For those of you who’ve never visited the National Cathedral, it’s really something to see. From the distance, it looks like a gigantic Gothic dog perched atop the highest hill in Washington, D.C., its limestone ears perked for the latest Beltway gossip. 

Inside, though, it’s like one of those caves in Mexico that people like to use for base jumping, the kind of cave the Discovery Channel would say was “so large, a jumbo jet could fly through it.”

You do get the feeling that an airplane could land on the marble nave of the National Cathedral, but I happen to know for a fact that the sacred runway, which measures a mere quarter mile, would be far too short for a jumbo jet. A Cessna could manage quite nicely, though.

So you’re in this massive house of worship. Colored light pours down from the monumental stained glass windows. It’s a good crowd, even for a Sunday. Let’s call it an even three thousand souls. The celebrant gives the signal. Somewhere, the invisible man who controls the sound system activates the choir microphones, which hang over our heads like vampire bats, trembling at the end of cables that disappear into the vault a hundred feet overhead.

Just at that moment, little Matthew Olshan, suffering from an unholy combination of heat exhaustion and boredom, begins to yawn. And not just any yawn. A jaws-wide, oxygen-sucking yawn, the kind you’ve seen gape the maw of a lunker largemouth.

And in that improbable few seconds, after the microphones have been switched on, but before there’s any covering music from the choir, Olshan’s mouth, locked in that titanic yawn, becomes the acoustical equivalent of a bullhorn.

There follows what can only be described as the mother of all hiccups.

The hiccup comes out of nowhere, although Olshan has been known to hiccup a fair amount of late. He attributes it to a growth spurt. (Sadly, the hoped-for growth spurt never really materializes.)

But whatever its cause, the hiccup erupts from his highly trained diaphragm, passes through the magnifying chamber of his yawn, and enters the exquisitely sensitive bank of hanging microphones, which have been turned way, way up for the pianissimo entrance of the anthem the choir is about to sing.

A sound like the angry squawk of a 300 foot parakeet explodes from speakers the size of refrigerators. The hiccup fills the cathedral like a bomb blast, reverberating endlessly up and down the aisles.

I remember how puzzled and fearful the bishop was – but only for a moment. A true showman, he recovered instantly. I remember the look of betrayal on the choirmaster’s face. I remember the reaction of the choirboys, which was a universal thumbs-up.

As if I’d planned it! Had I known the microphones were on, I doubt I could have stifled that hiccup. It surprised even me, rising up from the part of me controlled by the reptile brain within. At least, that’s how I tried to explain it after the fact. I was guilty of a lot of phrases like “reptile brain within” when I was nine or ten.

But back to the politicians, whose job consists of moving from microphone to microphone. As Joe Biden leaned over to confide in the president at the signing ceremony for health care reform legislation, did he really think that his “f-bomb” would pass unnoticed? Did Prime Minister Brown, who’s so famously uncomfortable meeting his constituents that his handlers practically have to drag him by the hair when it’s time for a meet and greet, really think that no one would hear him describe a woman as a “bigot” as his limo whisked him away?

I suppose it’s possible.

But I suspect that, on some level, these two men wanted to be heard, whatever the consequences. Or, if they didn’t actively want it, that they didn’t really care if they were heard.

At that signing ceremony, Joe Biden was so thrilled by the political victory that he couldn’t contain himself. His team had just won a bruising street brawl, and what came to mind was the vulgar language of the street. Driving away from yet another tiresome conversation about how immigrants are ruining England, Gordon Brown, sick to death of the politics of xenophobia, couldn’t contain himself, either. He called it like he saw it.

I blame the reptile brain within.

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 06 May 2010

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com