I'm doing a little survey to find out more about ALE listeners. There are just four tiny questions. It will only take a minute or two, and will help me a LOT! Please check it out. Thanks, Cooper

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CLICK HERE FOR THE SURVEY

Season 3 Episode 1

Thank you for downloading this episode.

👉The story begins at 03:10 and the tiny lessons begin at 14:30

👉You can find the transcript after the Credits!

👉Visit our website to download the Podcast User's Manual and find out more! https://alittleenglish.com/

A Little English is written, produced, recorded, edited, mixed, mastered and scored by Edward Cooper Howland.

All stories are either in the public domain, or written by me.

Copyright 2023 Edward Cooper Howland

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. My name is Cooper, and this is…A Little English. Every episode, I read a short story. After the story, there are three tiny lessons.

Well. Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you are enjoying a little vacation, and staying warm.

This week’s story is the scariest one I’ve ever read on the show. Why is it scary?

Because I wrote it.

In fact, from now on, unless I say otherwise, all the stories will be written by me. That was actually my plan from the beginning, but I wanted to figure out how to….you know…make a podcast before I started sharing stuff that I wrote.

So here’s the plan: This year I will write and record forty stories. Each of the stories will have the normal three tiny lessons. If you pay close attention, you’ll see that all the stories are connected. The characters in each story are all connected to the characters in other stories. It’s all one world. And if you listen to all of it, I hope, one large story will emerge. But each story is complete on its own as well, so don’t stress about it too much.

This is the biggest, most complicated, project I’ve ever started, and I really hope I can get through it in a year. More than that, I hope you all enjoy it.

The name of this story, appropriately enough , is:

“One”

The timing is the most important thing. Ben knows that she will arrive at the bar just after eight o’clock, like she does every Wednesday night. She and her girlfriends will come in laughing and joking. They’ll pull off their scarves and blow into their cold hands and order enormous  glasses of cheap red wine. Then she will sign up for karaoke. She will sing sad songs by U2. Ben knows this because she only ever sings sad songs by U2.

Ben knows that when it’s her turn, she will place her glass of wine carefully on the stool behind her, hold the microphone with both hands, and sing like this is the most important song in the whole world. Her voice will be flat, and she will probably forget some words, but Ben won’t care. He loves her because she sings from her heart. The timing is the most important thing because when she comes in just after eight o’clock tonight, Ben will be on the stage, singing U2’s best, saddest song.

He is nervous about singing the last part of the song. There are a bunch of very long, very high notes, like “ooOOooOO, and “HaaaaHaaHaAaaa.” Then he has to do some rock star “yeah! yeah! yeah! yeah!” stuff. During his lessons, his voice cracked almost every time he tried to hit the high notes. When he tried to say “yeah!” like a real rock star, he always felt like an idiot. He practiced again and again, until his teacher said it was good, but he never agreed. The end of the song is the best part, the most