On communication, professional and otherwise.
And then, in my usual struggle to convince my college daughter that her parents have anything happening in our lives back in in old Chicago, I mis-crowed on a FaceTime call that we’d acquired two toilets “that flush seven bowling balls!”
“Ummm, no, Dad. That’s impossible.”
“No, really! There’s a picture of it right on the box!”
“Dad, I don’t care what it says on the box, I’m telling you …”
I don’t like phrases whose very use is subtle, uncopped-to code, signaling that the utterer belongs to a certain cultural tribe.
Especially when that tribe is mine.
For instance, it grates on my balding scalp when one person refers to another person as a “good human.” What was wrong with “good person”? You could call someone a good person without vaguely insulting other people, or slyly appointing yourself as an arbiter between good members of your own species, and bad. Imagine a turtle, going around and appointing some of the other turtles, “good turtles.” What an asshole that turtle would have to be.
“It’s about how you show up.” What does that mean, exactly? I have heard it and read it a million times on LinkedIn and I literally do not know. Far as I can tell, all it means is that if you say it, you’re probably a good human. (Which means you live in a northern U.S. state and think Bad Bunny is a misnomer. Again: These are my hu— people! I just hate the way they talk.)
“It’s a lot.” You know what else is a lot? Life. Life is a lot. It’s more than you can even imagine. By the year, by the month, by the week and by the day. Even the most advantaged person’s life is a lot—or feels like a lot, to them, most of the time. I have a relatively easy job, talking to people all day, and writing stuff (sometimes, about the people I’ve been talking to). And yet every day seems like a lot.
I mean, just yesterday I was up at 6:00 a.m., e-nagged three dozen journalists, podcasters and communication executives, sat through five hours of Zoom calls of varying stakes—(one I forgot about until one-minute til, and had to frantically shower in the sink)—scheduled a half dozen more calls and embarrassingly double-booked an important one because I was distracted by a $2K bill I hadn’t seen coming, and had two toilets delivered on the sidewalk in front of my house that I had to wrestle, solo, up the stairs and into the living room. All before taking the dog for four-mile run and hammering this post out, between correspondence and communication about serious issues with friends and family, before dinner.
Or as Woody Guthrie sang, “I was born working, and I worked my way up by hard work. I ain’t ever got nowhere yet, but I got there by hard work. Work of the hardest kind. I been down and I been out. I been disgusted and busted and couldn’t be trusted. I worked my way up, and I worked my way down. I been drunk and I been sober, and I been baptized and I got hijacked. I been robbed for cash, and I been robbed on credit. Worked my way in jail and I worked my way outta jail. Woke up a lotta mornings, didn’t know where I was at. Yeah, it’s a lot.”
Reading passionate music reviews by my Facebook friends for and against Bad Bunny’s performance at halftime at the Super Bowl, I felt left out—and in danger of being shut out.
Even with all the pre-game controversy, and notwithstanding my predisposition to side with the guy the Trumpers are mad about, I found myself unable to conjure a reaction to the show itself, any stronger than the bland, heart-healthy turkey chili I was slurping. I sat gaping, half dumbstruck and half daydreaming, at the on-screen spectacle, in just the way I used to as a kid, watching the elaborate numbers on The Donnie & Marie Show. I’m just not a big-production kind of guy, I’m afraid.
I know we’re all pissed off all the time, but do we ever (ever ever ever ever ever) weary of the sound of our voices speaking truth to power? And will any American ever come to the realization that Dylan Thomas did one night, droning on in his cups at the Whitehorse Tavern. “Someone is boring me,” he interrupted himself. “I think it’s me.”
Speaking of which, here’s a piece I published here in 2020, on the cultural obsolescence of the word “opinionated.” —DM
***
Words come into popular usage, words go out. I try to keep the old ones around, because I am a hoarder. I still have palavers with my staff, and I tell my daughter it’s cold out, she should wear pantaloons. And that’s only two of the P words.
Usually we lose words and expressions when their cultural relevance fades, due to changes in circumstances. When someone drops a football, we don’t call them “butterfingers” anymore, because our home lives don’t involve a lot of handling of pans with butter-slathered hands.
Our shriveled agrarian roots have relegated expressions like “make hay while the sun shines” into legit head-scratchers for anyone under sixty.
And our long-forgotten common maritime experience washes the etymology and relevance away from phrases like, “We’re not having layoffs now, but I see them in the offing.” (The “offing,” of course, being the portion of the sea visible from shore, in which slowly approaching boats could sometimes be seen for days.)
But other times, words become irrelevant because what they describe is so ubiquitous that the words are no longer necessary.
I was once being squired around Phoenix, Arizona, by a young native of the place. Gazing out the car window, I asked her why the whole town seems to be a series of strip malls. She asked me, “What is a strip mall?”
Similarly, have you noticed, you don’t often hear anyone call anyone “opinionated,” anymore.
Or, for that matter, a “boor.”