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A professional storyteller talks about how she may have gone one round too far in the funny voices ring with her toddler…

Shonaleigh Cumbers is a Druts’yla (a traditional Jewish storyteller) by profession. She thinks she may be in danger of developing a split personality however. It’s all because of her 3 year old son Isaac and his demand that she provide a voice for the objects around him. It all started with her providing funny voices for his toys during play. Soon her vocal repertoire was forced to expand to include candlesticks, bananas, snails, clouds…everything.

There was a particularly embarrassing moment recently in a supermarket. "I have had to be a box of talking Tampax, which was amazingly embarrassing. He picked this box up and said, ‘They’re not speaking to me, mummy.’ I said I think they are asleep and he said, ‘No, no. They’re not speaking to me.’ So I was crouched down in the corner going ‘No, we’re asleep. We’re fast asleep. We can’t speak now.’ It was so humiliating. When people came around the corner, the embarrassment was akin to if you had your finger up your nose and someone you really fancied came around the corner."

The idea of objects speaking is not alien to Shonaleigh. Her grandmother (also a Druts’yla) looked after her while her mother went to work, and told her all the traditional Yiddish stories and a few she made up herself. "She had a speaking glass eyeball when I was tiny which I only found disturbing when I got to about 12, but found perfectly normal when I was Isaac’s age. She had inherited it off of a relative and used to carry it around and pop it out on occasion. I’ve had it made into an earring now."

When asked why Isaac needs to have everything speak, his mother explains, "He didn’t actually speak directly to me until about six months ago. He would only speak to inanimate objects. He would speak to his cuddly toys. He would tell them things, but he wouldn’t actually speak directly to adults."

When asked if she thinks Isaac understands which things are real and which things are make-believe, Shonaleigh responds "I’m pretty sure he does. He has this knowing look. Especially now when he’s making me do things in public. There’s almost this sort of sidelong look like ‘I’m humiliating my mother and she’s too stupid to realise.’ But when I’m not there, he gets things to talk to each other as well. So, maybe he’s learning the tradition. There was a conversation as I left to come here between a Malteaser and a floor tile."

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