Memory Test

For some reason, while driving to work the other morning, I began thinking of the “One Hen, Two Ducks” routine. I remember trying to teach it to my younger daughter and video taping the results. We watched the tape years later and laughed.

I remember first hearing it on the Tonight Show when Jerry Lewis was substituting for the host, Johnny Carson. I remember watching it on a TV that was built into the wall in the dining room of our home in Queens. My father had closed up the space under the stairs which led to the bedroom level and had left an opening for the TV in the wall. There was a storage space underneath and I used to be small enough to enter the space under the TV through the home-made sliding doors.

I remember watching Jerry Lewis say the words and being so fascinated by it that I tried to write it down from memory. I had a Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder about the size of a small suitcase. This was before the invention of the cassette tape. I was able to record the audio portion of the show the next night when Jerry Lewis again did the bit. In those days, a guest host worked the entire week. I was able to play the recording back several times until I got all the words. I kept a written copy and began committing it to memory. I don’t know what happened to the reel-to-reel audio tape or the written copy, both probably thrown out with my comic books and baseball cards in the days before I became a pack rat and tried to save everything.

I was about 11 years old when this all took place and now, nearly 49 years later, I still know it by memory. After I taught it to my daughter, I remember learning in the early days of the internet that it was actually something used by the Girl Scouts. I was saddened at the time because I thought it was something Jerry Lewis invented.

So when I got to the office, I typed “one hen, two ducks” into the google search engine and got a number of sites. The first was from a Girl Scout troop but did give credit to Jerry Lewis. The second, from a google staffer, gives a more detailed explanation, verifying my own recollection, but adding that it was used by NBC to test the pronunciation of announcers. The routine is almost word for word as I remembered it and taught it to my daughter, except for the sixth to the last word. I used to say “quivy” but it seems to be quivery, whatever the heck that is. The online dictionary has this definition of quiver: “to shake with a slight but rapid motion; vibrate tremulously; tremble” and states that quivery is an adjective. You would think that the word would more likely apply to the 9 old men on roller skates than to the 10 diabolical denizens of the deep, but I can’t really quibble about this.

Here’s the entire test, which is said one line at a time but adding the next line cumulatively and asking a person to try to repeat it from memory. Most people don’t get past the fourth line without making a mistake.

"One Hen, Two Ducks

· One hen
· Two ducks
· Three squawking geese
· Four limerick oysters
· Five corpulent porpoises
· Six pair of Don Alverzo's tweezers
· Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array
· Eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt
· Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic, old men on roller skates with a marked propensity towards procrastination and sloth
· Ten lyrical, spherical diabolical denizens of the deep who hall stall around the corner of the quo of the quay of the quivery, all at the same time.

This is called the "Announcer's Test". It originated at Radio Central New York in the early 1940's as a cold reading test given to prospective radio talent to demonstrate their speaking ability.

Del Moore, a long time friend of Jerry Lewis', took this test at Radio Central New York in 1941, and passed it on to him. (Del Moore is best remembered as Dr. Warfield in "The Nutty Professor," 1963)

Jerry has performed this test on radio, television and stage for many years, and it has become a favorite tongue twister of his fans around the world."