Off topic: if you're often bored while driving, learn the NATO phonetic alphabet using license plates around you. It helps me four or five times a year when reading off things to people in customer service. The beauty of it is that people who don't know it can still understand it when said to them.
F for what? S? F is now Frank and S is now Sugar, because Foxtrot and Sierra often just get "was that s or f? What is Soxtrot?" it's ridiculous. I think everyone should be taught the NATO phonetic alphabet in school. When I'm talking to someone on the phone, I don't want to have to resort to Apple Banana Chocolate like we're all 5.
Also, I live just down the road from Guelph and worked in Guelph for a while :)
So, the solution to not wanting to feel self conscious while saying decidedly simple and inoffensive words, and for task simple enough that people could probably be given a simple sentence or two instruction (choose a word that doesn't sound like another one) and could come up with valid examples (like you just did), is to force them to learn a semi-universal and generic set of mostly nonsense words and names?
I did tech support for years, and any time I had to have someone type out a specific set of characters, it was not hard to just rely on common names, animals, or other extremely common words. The amount of wasted man-years in teaching and testing a phonetic alphabet for such little benefit would be mind boggling. The military has very specific requirements which change the cost benefit analysis greatly (verbal communication during battle conditions, for one), but those don't really apply to most people. It's trivial to come up with something that works well on the fly.
The NATO alphabet isn't just used by NATO, it's used worldwide by civil and commercial aviation personnel (pilots & ATC). There's a reason for this: these words were carefully selected because they're unique and won't be confused with other words.
It absolutely should be taught in school; it's not hard at all, and everyone has problems spelling words out on noisy communication channels (like cellphones).
Why does this seem like it should be wrong? XD
I'm now imagining 5 year olds field stripping, cleaning and re-assembling semi-automatic rifles like miniature Marine snipers, hahahaha.
I was field stripping and re-assembling AKM in school (just like everyone else in the class), on the clock, under watchful eye of a real war veteran. And shooting .22 rifles in school's basement. Not a big deal. Admittedly we were older than 5 years, but not by much.
The problem is when an improvised phonetic alphabet is being used because the speaker doesn't know a standardized phonetic alphabet. These people almost never take care to pick words that don't sound like other words. They think they're being helpful but often they're being less intelligible than if they weren't trying to use any phonetic alphabet at all. That is where the real benefit lies in teaching people to do it properly. It doesn't take long at all to teach a child the NATO phoenetic alphabet; your objection to the time it takes reeks of anti-intellectualism.