Vocabularious Circumstances

Last week, I was leaving school and I saw our chaplain as I was walking to my car. I gave him the usual: "Have a good weekend, Father."

Just as I said that, I wondered what would happen if word frequency counters were attached to people. We all must, by varying professions and life circumstances, use certain words with more frequency than others do.

"Father," for instance. Most people have fathers, but even out of those people, a great number rarely use the word "father." They might use "dad" or "pop" or whatever else. But, as a guy who works in a Catholic school, (and who went all of his life to public school and, therefore, still feels a need for formality when talking to priests -- a need that seems, ironically, much less urgent in those I know who went to Catholic school) I must use the world "father" with exceedingly more frequency than most people.

Or what about the word "note"? As a musician, I am sure I use the word more than most, but I wonder what the percentage of difference is... We all have passed "notes" and we all write "notes" to coworkers about things and we all have used the word "note" in reference to music, but I wonder to what degree my use of the word exceeds that of others after years of playing, composing, taking lessons, giving lessons, etc...

Well, I'll just sit back and wait for the direct-to-brain computers to come out. Once we all have ports in our heads, I'm sure we will be able to track this kind of thing with relative ease. Which would be totally worth it.

What word do you think you use more than anyone on the planet?

Eulogy for an Old Drinking Buddy

I have lost a good and useful friend. He was a dark friend, no doubt. He wouldn't go everywhere with me. But where he showed up, he was effective -- even powerful; even intimidating.

Where would he go with me? Smokey taverns, for one. He was only comfortable around gentlemen. He tended to stay hidden when the ladies were around, but when the joke was among the boys, he was a bawdy card.

"McSorley's Bar," by John Sloan

He also was a fierce competitor on the sports field, but he didn't like the umpires and referees to see him. He was a gravelly whisper between me (the defender) and the fellow I was clashing with over the ball. He was right there with me if someone came all dust and high spikes into the base I was covering and gashed my shin.

Sometimes, he was my only companion in moments of lonely anger -- those times when I skinned my knuckles, reaching in to replace a car battery, for instance. Or he would rumble out under the roar of the band when a quarter-inch drumstick splinter lodged itself into my finger halfway through a song, when I couldn't stop to take it out.

He used to be a star on the screen, too. He'd deliver some pretty dramatic moments; one, in particular, shared with the legendary Clark Gable. But he's no presence of the screen anymore. He's but a wraith. He's a strand of hay in a haystack.

Maybe Not

Would you stand before a lawn-mower and ask it to calculate the diameter of its own wheels? No. You would not. You would not do this simply because the poor, non-sentient landscaping machine would not understand. It cannot understand such a request; therefore, you would stop speaking to it without further cogitative expenditures if you had, for some reason, ever begun.

Would you ask a loaf of bread to pass the salt? No. Why? Same reason. (That, and its rather blatant lack of arms.)

Do we all see the fruitlessnes in explaining to our shoes that we are experiencing a spiritual crisis? Do we comprehend what a waste of breath it is to assure our car that we will fill it up with gasonline, soon?

Yes. We do. This is because we know the nature of these objects and, if not, after one embarrassingly useless conversation with a knitted scarf, most of us learn our lesson.

In Defense of "Happy Holidays"

As a "word guy" I am annoyed by a lot of things people say and I have referenced a few of them on H&R. And, like a lot of you, I'm turned off by "doublespeak" and jargon and I am suspicious of anything that is considered "politically correct," not only because being politically correct seems cowardly (even though it is often kind, though more often beneficial to the speaker), but because I have learned that whatever politically correct word or phrase one picks, someone is bound to figure out a way to be offended by it; and, even if a politically correct statement is okay today, it might not be okay tomorrow.

(Think of the progress from that most atrocious of n-words (from the corrupted word "negro") to the gentler "colored" to the proudly proclaimed "black" and, eventually, to the "politicaly correct" "African American" -- a phrase, by the way, that a black college student of mine one voiced violent objection to: "If I hear one more person in this room refer to black people as African Americans, I'm going to flip." His objection was that he was black, but of West-Indian descent and that calling him African American was simply incorrect and that is was also a default disregarding of his culture. He saw, he said, no more problem being referred to as "the black guy" than he would imagine a ginger person should have with being called "the red-haired guy.")

Prestolinguistics

An appeal to those who speak the English language, for the sake of my own sanity. Selfish, yes, but I truly feel I might flip. Only you have the power to prevent Matarazzean flippage. Please consider the following:

Sometimes I think all understanding of the the power of language is gone; for instance, when someone tells me he "literally" is going to explode. This shows no respect for the word "literally." And if it merely shows a lack of understanding, I would submit that this lack of understanding is a sign of diserespect -- one doesn't respect the language enough to learn one of its most effective words.

But sometimes, I think people give the power of words too much respect, as if they believe that a mere statement can alter reality.

Whossat?

Thomas Eakins. "The Baby At Play"

The other day, my mother mentioned the first thing I ever said. It was a question: "Whossat?" This was, of course, the closest I could get to "Who's that?"

According to all the stories, I said it every single time I saw someone enter the room, pass the window or drive by in the street. This went on for quite some time. It occurred to me that my first "word" pretty summed up what I would be all about for the rest of my life. It foretold who I was going to be: someone who is preoccupied with figuring out who the people around me are, really -- what makes them do the things they do and feel the things they feel; what moves them; what scares them; what deludes them; what drives them to walk, act, think and dream in certain particular ways.