With respect to the chipper “howdy” with which the attendant greeted customers: it was almost never the case that the first syllable was higher-pitched than the second and was almost always the case that the interval in pitch between the two syllables was greater than one would encounter in normal conversational speech.
Sometimes the tonal distance between the syllables seemed to span several octaves (howwwwww- DY!), sometimes the “dy” seemed not more than a fourth above the tonic of the ‘how’.
(Idea for band name: Tonic Of The ‘How’)
Attendant’s eyes wandered from corner to corner of the ceiling of the store as he tried to apply musical values to his spoken discourse.
Attendant, in spirit of extreme silliness and idleness would contemplate that “do-re-mi-fa-so…” should be replaced by “how-dy-how-dy-how….”
Attendant noticed that customer’s “thaaaaaank YOU” covered about the same ascending tonal interval as his “howwwww DY”, almost a copyright infringement type scenario, he fretted.
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 