Out of the Mouths of Youngsters

education, etc., family, food, humor, language

The other day I saw a post telling a story of when a toddler asked his mother for brownies, so she baked a pan of them. But that wasn’t what the boy wanted. He wanted “white brownies,” which is what he called hash browns. (I would have guessed he wanted brownies made with white chocolate, which I don’t even know if it’s possible to do. Also, I don’t know of any style of hash browns that are white. Aren’t they brown too, hence the name? But I digress.)

Kids often invent their own bits of language, for which I don’t blame them, because they’re still learning ours. But along the way, they come up with words and phrases that are useful, cute, or just peculiar. I’ll share some examples.

Two phrases that aren’t related at all, but should be, are go-down and move-down. The first occurred way in the past, when an elderly coworker told me that she was going to buy her daughter a fancy hat for Easter (that used to be a thing). Marguerite insisted that she wanted one with a go-down. Puzzled, Dorothy asked her what she meant by that, but the youngster was unable to come up with a definition. “Well,” said Dorothy, “If you see one, let me know.” Marguerite did, and it turned out to be a ribbon on the bonnet that would go down her back. Mystery solved, perfectly logically.

“Move-down” was coined by a friend of mine when she was young. (Come to think of it, all of these stories are from friends about my age regarding their youth. But I digress again.) One night at dinner, she announced that she was having a move-down. This could have been an alarming statement, but her mother was clever and fairly quickly realized that it meant that Kelly was simply waiting for her food to settle before eating more, a stage which hobbits call “filling up the corners.” Ever since, my husband and I have used this phrase often: “Are you done eating, or just having a move-down?”

My friend Leslie told this one on herself: She was drowsing in the back seat of the car when her mother, who was driving, cried out, “Look at the coyotes!” But by the time Leslie woke up enough to look, there was nothing to be seen but the mile markers. For a long time thereafter, she thought that those signposts were actually called coyotes. (They didn’t live in a place where coyotes were abundant, but eventually she figured it out. But I digress yet again.)

Highways seem to be a fertile place for language invention. My husband was riding in a car with his father when he saw a sign that said “Merging Traffic.” But Dan read it as “Merenging Traffic.” (Possibly a portmanteau of merging and avenging, but something alarming at any rate. But I digress some more.) It has caught on in our household (or car, anyway), and we often say to each other, “Better move over. Those cars want to merenge.”

Another problem with reading signs came from Mary. In fact, it was reading that was the difficulty. Mary’s Mom boasted while on a car trip of how well young Mary could read. “Okay, read that exit sign,” the passenger challenged.

“It says reading,” Mary announced proudly. Unfortunately, she pronounced it “reeding.” They were actually at Reading Road, which was pronounced “redding.” An easy, if embarrassing mistake for a young reader (reeder) to make.

Finally, there was Tom, who couldn’t pronounce the many syllables in “grandmother.” His version came out as “Garboo.” (Not Garbo, as autocorrect insists. Garboo taught Tom racy puns, which I can’t imagine Greta doing. But I digress even more.)

Tom was unlucky, though. He couldn’t manage the syllables in “garbage” either, so that came out “Garboo” as well. (He could, of course, distinguish them visually, if not linguistically. But I digress still more.)

I’m sure I made some doozies myself, but I’m out of room here and can pretend I’ve forgotten them!

Business Blather

etc., humor, language

I recently read a post or article (can’t remember which) in which the writer invented wholly original business jargon to see how quickly it would come into use with that company. The one I remember was “Let’s triangle back to that” instead of “Let’s circle back to that.” Surprisingly (or not), before long the new terms were being used at team meetings, just as if they actually meant something.

During my unfortunate time in the corporate world, I heard and saw a lot of business sayings and metaphors that were either infuriating or amusing. The infuriating ones were war and sports metaphors. (Once, when the president of the company was giving us all a pep talk, he kept using sports metaphors. The women at the company requested more inclusive ones. The next time he addressed the gang, he was using metaphors like “stick to our knitting,” which is pretty hilarious when you think about it. But I digress.)

Other sports/business metaphors included “Skate to where the puck will be,” “move the goalposts,” “get in an athletic stance,” and “let’s get the blocking and tackling right.” (I suppose you could count “The view only changes for the lead dog,” an “inspirational” poster I saw, if you count the Iditarod as a sporting event (which I do). But I digress again.)

Business jargon also leads to some unique new words, most of which are horrible. The one I found that I actually like is “voluntold,” meaning drafted or otherwise assigned a duty without any actual volunteering occurring.

There were a few aviation metaphors as well. “We’re out of runway” and “Let’s take a 30,000-foot view on this,” and “We’re building the plane while we’re flying it,” which sounds like a bad idea in business and even worse in aviation. {I’m not sure about “break down the silos.” I think they probably mean missile silos, which is sort of like aviation or else war, rather than ones for storing grain. Whichever way they mean it, it refers to getting different departments of an organization to talk to one another. But I digress some more.)

Other business metaphors are just weird. There’s “spread the peanut butter,” which is about allocating resources. (Sometimes, apparently, just “peanut butter” is used as a verb: “Let’s peanut butter this to all the departments.” But I digress yet again.) And there’s the awkward “If you can’t ride two horses at once, get out of the circus!” Apparently they’re saying that the business is a circus, an odd admission to make.

There are obvious clichés: “Think outside the box”; easy-to-interpret ones: “put a pin in it,” “selling bottom-of-the-keg products,” “drinking from a firehose”; and computer jargon: “I want to double-click on your idea.”

Linguist and author Suzette Haden Elgin (The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense; Native Tongue series) often said that there were not enough tactile metaphors in writing to go with all the visual and audio ones. I did find one that I think she would have liked: “Get our arms around a problem.”

(Suzette also said that you could stop any pointless discussion cold by saying, “We’ll, you can’t tell which way the train is going by looking at the tracks.” I’ve never tried it, but I bet it would work. I generally get nothing but confusion when I say, “If my aunt had wheels, she’d be a teacart.” But I digress even more.)

Thankfully, I am out of the business world now, freelancing merrily, if not all the way to the bank, at least to some satisfaction. And any jargon or metaphors I encounter are mine alone.

Fun With Typos and Other Mistakes

etc., , ,

When I was editing magazines, the thing we feared most was typos. I know that autocorrect has introduced as many typos as it has autocorrected (It’s never duck!). But back then, any typo was on us. (I was the proofreader as well as an editor, so usually it was on me. But I digress.)

Since it was also an educational magazine, the typo we feared most was in the words “Public School.” Losing that first L would have been the kiss of death. We were successful in keeping it in the right place. (Once I caught a bilingual mistake made by our senior editor, a lady we all suspected was at least 110. She used to send in manuscripts on scraps of paper and toilet paper rolls. I got to say to her sweetly, “Oh, you do want it to say ‘Mi casa is su casa.’” But I digress again.)

Another kind of word boo-boo involves the sense of hearing. It’s called a “mondegreen” (which I’ll explain if you ask me to, but this post is long enough already) and occurs in the context of misheard song lyrics. The most famous is probably either “There’s a bathroom on the right“ or “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy,” though I’m partial to “I can see all the popsicles in my way.”

(Once I thought I heard “Jack of Orkin” in a song and took it to refer to a British nobleman of some kind. It turned out to be “Jack Kevorkian.” (Why was there a song about Kevorkian, you may wonder. The song was really about James A. Moon, a Hoosier who invented a personal guillotine-like device, which, come to think of it, isn’t much better. The song compared him to both Kevorkian and Joseph-Louis Guillotin) But I digress at length.)

Then instead of misheard words, there are misread words. Recently, I saw the word “podcasts” and thought it was “podcats.” This reminded me of a book I read in which kittens grew on trees. Hint: Don’t pick them before they’re ripe.

I also recently thought I heard an ad on TV that I thought said, “No going backpacking,” which I thought was a curious PSA. It was really a political ad sponsored by “No Going Back PAC, Inc.”

Speaking of politics, once an acronym almost got the government in trouble. It was during the Second Gulf War in the early 2000s. (It was also called the Iraq War.) Since every war has to have a name, and every name has an acronym, someone in government suggested Operation Iraqi Liberty, which sounded fine until someone noticed that the acronym would be OIL, which would be too spot on. They quickly changed it to Operation Iraqi Freedom. (I guess they could have named it Operation Arab Freedom, but again the acronym would be appallingly appropriate. But I digress some more.)

Then there are unfortunate web addresses. The one I remember was supposed to say “Ski Mad River,” a local ski slope, at least when it was snowing or their artificial snow machine was working. But their web address came out to skimadriver.com. I inevitably read it as skima-driver. It made me wonder whether a Skima was an Eastern European car that no one in the U.S. bought or an unfortunate successor to Zima, a beverage that no one drinks anymore and probably shouldn’t have in the first place. (I guess you could have a Skima drinker driving a Skima car, but that would present other problems. By the way, I looked up translations of “skima” because of course I did and found that in Icelandic, skima means “glimmer,” which still has nothing to do with skiing. I suppose a glimmer driver would mean someone who has faulty headlights. But I digress even more.)

Do you have any favorite typos, mondegreens, or language fox paws? Feel free to share them in the comments section. Maybe I’ll use them in a future post!

Are All the Good Ones Taken?

etc., humor, social policy, , ,

Recently, I saw a post in a group called Fuck the Patriarchy that asked the poignant, if unoriginal, question: Are all the good men taken? (Actually, it was phrased “Are all the good men coupled?,” a verb I associate more with train cars than with men. But I get the point and digress.)

(There seems to be a fair amount of relationship questions and advice in the group, rather than a strict focus on dismantling systems of oppression. But I digress some more.)

I find it encouraging that the assumption is that there are some men who are not essential parts of the patriarchy, and that they’re considered viable options for coupling with (or whatever).

The real question, I think, though, is not “Are there enough good men to go around?” It’s “Are there enough good enough men to be in a couple with?” (Or a thruple, if that’s your preference. Some kind of committed relationship, anyway. But I digress yet again.)

I say that because a “good man” may be too high a standard. It comes too close to being a perfect man, and that’s an impossible burden. Every man is a Jerk Boy once in a while.

What’s that (I hear you ask)? Well, a Jerk Boy is one who strays from the ideal in some measure. Not one who strays from the relationship, if the comments section is any indication, though.

One definition of a gentleman is one who, when he pees in the sink, at least removes the dishes first. Admittedly, that’s a pretty low standard. I would call him a Jerk Boy and tell him that as long as he’s there, he can wash the damn dishes.

Every woman has had Jerk Boys in her life. That’s a given. Whether that’s a deal breaker largely depends on how Jerky and how Boyish the guy really is.

Take my husband. (Well, no, don’t. I do lend him out for certain occasions, though, such as when one of his women friends (and he does have them) wants to see a movie or play that I don’t. Just have him home by midnight. But I digress some more.) Even Dan is a Jerk Boy at times. Just not the pee in the sink variety.

So, what are the standards for a “good man?” One who openly tries to destroy the patriarchy, or one who supports me when I do? One who actively educates other men about how to behave respectfully with women or one who behaves respectfully himself and thereby leads by example? I’ll take the second one in each of those comparisons. He’s good enough for me.

Not that I think that the first, or truly good, ones don’t exist. I do suspect, however, that, as of yet, there aren’t enough of them to go around. And fighting over them isn’t what you’d call good feminist behavior. (There’s enough debate in the group over what good feminist behavior is, especially in regard to cheating partners and what sisterhood requires one to do about it when the opportunity for a single woman to have a fling with a married man arises. And no, I will not debate that at this time. But I digress, just not that far. That’s a topic for Fuck the Patriarchy to take up, and they have.)

So, I am coupled with Dan for over 40 years, if not always perfectly blissful ones. He’s good enough for me. And only occasionally a Jerk Boy.

Words I’m Not Used To (Yet)

social policy, education, humor, etc., language, writing,

Language evolves over time. I know this and have (mostly) gotten used to it. In fact, I like it. I enjoy neologisms. I’m very fond of “yeet,” for example. (Although I’ve never understood the conjugation of yeet. I think it’s probably yeet/yeeted/yeeted. If I ran the zoo, it would be yeet/yote/yoten. But I digress.) I don’t know if yeet will last. I kind of doubt it, but while it’s still around, I’m going to savor it. (Dan yeets things all the time, so I’ll have plenty of chances to use it. But I digress again.)

Every year the various dictionaries add words that they deem to have made it into the language. This year, Merriam-Webster spotlighted 1,400 new words, some of which I knew (Rickroll, looksmaxxing) and some of which I didn’t (cuffing season, parasocial). There were also new uses of old words, such as “compute” as a noun.

Some new words or usages bother me. I’m still not used to “overwhelm” when it’s used as a noun rather than a verb. It just sounds wrong, even though I don’t know of any other word that fills that particular lexical gap.

I also love changes in language that serve a purpose in society. The best example I can think of is the demise of sex-linked words for occupations. When this change first got going, the new words and phrases sounded awkward, or there didn’t seem to be solutions for firmly entrenched forms of speech.

Some were derided at first, like “Men at Work” signs (though not the band), which sensibly became “Work Zone. Some have been abbreviated, such as “chair” instead of “chairman.” (Although I did once see someone try out “chairhead,” which, as far as I can tell, disappeared after the one use. Good. But I digress some more.)

The use of “male” or “female” (or “lady”) to preface occupations has likewise faded out. “Stewardess” briefly begat “steward,” but quickly both were given up for “flight attendant.” And publications are increasingly less likely to use “woman physicist” or “lady astronaut,” unless they mean the first example, which is also becoming less noteworthy.

(The only occupation for which this is not true is “nurse.” Most people feel compelled to say “male nurse” unless there’s an obvious man’s name attached to it (Nurse Jim Denker, for example). Otherwise, a reminder is due. “I heard the nurse was just here. Did she give you a shot?” “No, he didn’t.” And many of us still expect a nurse practitioner to be a woman and a physician’s assistant to be a man. But I digress even more.)

But the new usage that most often trips me up is actor/actress. Oh, I know what it means when someone refers to “actor Gwyneth Paltrow,” but I find myself stumbling over using the word to apply to both sexes. I just can’t seem to remember to say “beloved actor Carrie Fisher” or “Meryl Streep is a fine actor” or “the film features actors Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.” I know this is a lack of linguistic subtlety and a failure in feminism on my part, but I just haven’t gotten used to saying it. I’ll keep practicing.

The New York Times Magazine published an article this week about the furor over new words entering dictionaries. It proposed that the usual dictionaries aren’t the right place for all these neologisms. Instead, they asked, “Couldn’t some new thing join them, some Oxford Social Reference or Collins Meme Almanac, for the sake of those poor future historians?” These, they suggested, would be “slang dictionaries,” a kind of L.S.P. dictionaries (“language for specific purposes”).

That might satisfy the lexicographers, but not the people who don’t know what lexicographers are. I, for one, am tired of looking up words in The Urban Dictionary and would like somewhere official to go for info. I like the idea of having a place to find new words and their definitions. Maybe we also need a dictionary listing recent words that have fallen out of use. These would have to be online editions of the dictionaries, of course, publishing and printing being the long, expensive productions that they are. (But I digress linguistically, wishing I had become a lexicographer. Chat, that would have been a flex.)

Stupid Questions for Writers

arts and crafts, books, etc., humor, writing, ,

People in most professions get asked stupid questions all the time. Teachers are asked how they like having their summers “off.” Police officers are asked whether they’ve ever shot anyone. (I suppose that, any day now, people will start asking teachers whether they’ve ever shot anyone. But I digress.)

I’ve had quite a few different jobs in my day, from inventory taker to restaurant cashier to the person who runs the duplicating machine in an office, and more. (The job running the duplicating machine invariably elicits the question, “Do you get high from the fumes of the purple ink?” The answer is yes, at least a little buzz. If you wear clear fingernail polish, your nails will turn purple, too. Now that’s something you know. But I digress again.)

But most of my life, I’ve been a writer and editor. And, boy, do we get stupid questions! Here are a few of my favorites, along with the answers.

Where do you get your ideas?

I wish I could say that I get them from an idea subscription service that’s operated out of a garage in Schenectady. But that would be untrue. Besides, someone already said it. (Maybe Robert Bloch, author of the book Psycho, source material for the famous film. I’m not really sure, and I digress anyway.)

In truth, right now I’m not getting my ideas from anywhere. In general, they simply pop into my head and, lately, my popper has pooped out. Nor has my husband or my cat done anything even remotely amusing. Dan is busy, and Toby is lethargic. I haven’t even done anything amusing lately, unless you count watching multiple episodes of Chopped to fall asleep, which I don’t. Consider it amusing, I mean. I do sometimes fall asleep to Chopped.

Do you make a lot of money?

No. Stephen King makes a lot of money. John Grisham makes a lot of money. J.K. Rowling makes a lot of money. I don’t.

I do get royalties from my books, and I’m saving up for a pizza.

What have you written that I would have heard of?

Probably nothing, unless you’ve ever subscribed to niche educational magazines like Catechist, Technology and Learning, or Early Childhood News. And a few issues of Black Belt. (I think I am right in saying that I am the only person ever to have been published in both Catechist and Black Belt. But I digress some more.)

I have written two books that have been published: Bipolar Me and Bipolar Us. Those are the ones that fund my occasional pizza habit. And I’ve written some crime/mystery novels that have never been published, but obviously you wouldn’t have heard about them either, until just now.

I have an idea for a book. Can you write it, and we’ll split the profits?

No. Just no. Even my husband asks me this one, and I tell him no, though splitting the profits wouldn’t really be an issue, except, I guess, for the pizza money.

Having an idea is the easy part. Writing the book based on it is hard work. You don’t just sit at your computer and bang it out. It takes months at the least and sometimes years. Do you really want to pay for over a year of my time and creative brain power? I thought not.

Have you met anyone famous?

By this, I assume they mean any famous writers. The answer is yes. Not that I have close personal friends who are famous writers, but I have met quite a few at writers’ conferences and science fiction conventions. (At least one of whom invited me back to his hotel room, so I guess I just missed getting a close personal friend that way. But I digress, salaciously, and am not taking any questions on the matter.)

Anyway, I have met Sue Grafton, Jenny Lawson, Larry Niven, Frank McCourt, Sarah Zettel, and Captain Kangaroo, among others. (You will no doubt be relieved to know that The Captain was not the one with the hotel room. That’s an explanation, not a digression. Know how to tell the difference? Because I say so.)

Of course, I also get asked, “How do I get published?” (I don’t know.) And “Do I need an agent?” (Probably, unless you know a lot more about publishing than I do, in which case, why are you asking me? But I digress my last, at last. (At least for this week.))

Can Cats Learn Human Speech?

cats, etc., humor, language, pets,

If the question is “Can cats learn to speak like humans?” the answer is “obviously not.” Cats have a very limited vocabulary, though they make the most of what they’ve got. Mostly, they say “meow” or some variation thereof, like “mew.” Most cats purr and occasionally hiss.

(I’ve had or known cats that had more extensive vocabularies. One of them could say “now.” Our present cat, Toby, often says “meep,” though it’s unclear what he means by it. Other cats make odd little bleating noises. Then there are cats that are capable of mouthing words, or at least one word. The silent meow happens when a cat moves its lips but doesn’t make an actual sound. But I digress.)

Cats expect their humans to interpret their vocalizations, and for the most part, we do. Generally, whatever they say means “Feed me,” or occasionally, “Pet me.” I say, for the most part. You can get some nasty scratches if you misinterpret a certain meow or purr as “pet me” when it really means “Stay away from me, human.” It’s difficult or impossible to tell the difference unless the cat also has the power of vocal inflection, which most don’t. (I did have one cat who was able to make her needs known by telepathy and another who was able to express the equivalent of “Don’t fight. It stresses me,” using both voice and actions. But I digress again.)

But if you mean, “Can cats understand what human speech means?” the answer is “not always.” Toby understands “Do you wanna eat?” or its variations and pays rapt attention when you say it.

He doesn’t understand “Get down,” or if he does, he simply ignores it. When Toby gets on my desk, which he is absolutely forbidden to do, no amount of “Get down” will work. Neither will “Get off the desk ” or “Get down from there, you horrible, naughty beast!” I can understand why he wouldn’t comprehend “bad kitty.” He deserves it so often that it has lost its meaning.

(Cats are supposedly able to learn a few simple commands like “Get down.” I’m supposed to give the command calmly but firmly, and then point to where I want him to go. If he doesn’t get the idea, I should put my hand on his backside and give a gentle push while saying “Get down.” Finally, if nothing else works, I should physically relocate him and then pretend that it was his idea all along, petting him and saying “good kitty,” which simply isn’t true. He’s been coerced, not cooperative. (I’ve heard of cat agility competitions where cats must navigate an obstacle course and have clearly learned to respond to commands in order to participate. But I digress even more.))

Cats can also learn and respond to their names. They just sometimes choose not to. Humans give their cats nicknames, and sometimes cats’ names are changed when they’re adopted, and the cats adapt accordingly. We once took in a stray and called her Dushenka. Only later did we learn that in her previous life, she had been known as Carmen. The change appeared to bother her not at all, and we kept calling her Dushenka after we found out. (I did know of a cat that would respond immediately to “Hey, you! You with the fur!” It was no doubt clear to the cat that he was the only one in the household who fit that description. But I digress still more.)

I hate to admit it, but understanding human speech is one area where dogs are actually superior to cats. Dogs can learn dozens of commands, even relatively complex ones. They can respond appropriately to voice commands, hand signals, whistles, and other forms of training and communication. Cats are simply no good at performing complex tasks such as being service animals or rescuing lost hikers. It’s all they can do to make it to the food bowl when obviously they’re perishing from hunger.

Dogs even have devices that allow them to press buttons corresponding to messages they want to give their humans. These include “Feed me,” “I need to go potty,” and “Play with me,” of course, but they can also combine two different buttons to indicate their wants or needs, such as the combination of “outside” and “potty” versus “outside” and “play.” (It’s been noted that dogs don’t use the button that corresponds to “I love you” as often as their humans say it to the dogs. Cats would, I suppose, need an “I tolerate you” button. But I digress even more.)

But I am, after all, one of those crazy cat ladies who holds entire one-sided conversations with Toby. I know he doesn’t understand, but I chalk it up as another way that being a pet parent gives me satisfaction. Not that I wouldn’t feel even more satisfaction if he would just stay off my desk!

How I Like to Spend Time and Money

Christmas, etc., family, film, food, humor, music, travel

It’s easy to say that time and money are different. You can’t know how much time you have, but you can know how much money you have, especially at the end of the month. (Unless you’re like me and the bills from the last week tend to sneak up on you. I freely confess this is sloppy online bookkeeping on my part. But I digress.)

It’s also possible to say, as it often is, that time is money. Most people trade their time for money in the world of work. The opposite—that money is time—is less true, however. How do you trade money for time, after all? They’re not quite interchangeable. (Or as I prefer, fungible, a great word that ought to mean able to be converted into a mushroom. Alas, it doesn’t. But I digress again.) You can’t actually buy time by trading money for it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about time and money lately, and not just because it’s nearing the end of the month. Instead of thinking of spending money on time, I prefer to spend it on experiences. Oh, there are things that I like to spend money on, primarily books and jewelry, but most of the pleasure I get from spending money is from doing things.

Experiences are what I prefer to spend my money on. It could be the simple pleasures of eating out. But even then I like novelty, experiencing something new, something unfamiliar, something special.

The first time I tried sushi, it was definitely something special, handmade by my martial arts instructor’s wife and so impossible to refuse. I ate spotted dick in London, mostly so I could say, “I want a spotted dick” when I ordered it. I ate curried goat in Jamaica, which tasted like curry (duh!) and had the texture of a pot roast. (I also visited a leper colony there. No one there was still contagious. Nonetheless, I did not eat the food there. That would be too much experience for me. But I digress yet again.)

I no longer go to first-run movies, but I can’t resist classic films restored to their original form and shown on the big screen. We saw Cabaret, Blazing Saddles, and Labyrinth that way, and I just know Dan will insist on seeing It’s a Wonderful Life when December rolls around. He may start crying in the theater, though.

We used to travel quite a bit, both alone and with our mothers. Again, I preferred experiences. Dan likes buying souvenirs from each place we went. Instead, I took lots of photos to preserve the experiences for future reminiscing. I didn’t always get the shots I really wanted. For example, there was a festival in Croatia promoting the use of condoms. There were people dressed in sperm costumes dancing around the plaza, but I never managed to snap a pic. (I guess we were lucky that there were no souvenirs for Dan to buy. They would have looked strange on our mantelpiece. But I digress even more.) I also hope that when my memory gets spotty, I can conjure up the experiences with photographic evidence that they happened.

One of my favorite experiences was in London, when we went on the Jack the Ripper Walking Tour one drizzly, atmospheric evening. (We didn’t make Mom Reily accompany us on that. I did get a souvenir from it: the definitive book on Jack the Ripper, autographed by the scholar who wrote it and who led the tour. Yet another digression.)

Other experiences I’ve had include riding a mule, going on a zipline, milking a goat, churning butter, drinking grappa and cachaça (not at the same time, you understand), refraining from kissing the Blarney Stone (it was just after Covid, plus I wasn’t sure my back would hold up), studying ninjutsu, buying amethysts in Rio, touring caves, including one where you had to crawl on your belly, studying beekeeping, and some dodgy pursuits I won’t go into here.

I’d have to say it’s been a life full of experiences—and I haven’t checked out yet. There’s still so much to see and do and experience!

Perfectly Awful

etc., humor, language, , ,

Every morning before Dan goes to work, we have the same conversation. “Honey, how do I look?” I check him over to make sure he hasn’t forgotten his name badge, his hair and beard aren’t doing something weird(er than usual), and the tag isn’t out on his shirt collar.

“You look wrecked,” I say, even though he actually looks fine, with everything in place. I can’t say “fine,” though. Then he thinks I think he looks awful.

This is a holdover from Dan’s childhood. Back then, there were only two categories of being—perfect and awful, which he called “wrecked.” (Therapists call this “all-or-nothing” or “black-and-white” thinking, and it’s something they try to stamp out. It also shows up in rhetoric and logical fallacies, where it appears as an unwillingness to see that there’s a middle ground possible between two extremes. You see it all the time in political debates and advertisements. But I digress.)

So it goes. “Okay” and “good” don’t exist, or “needs pressing,” “here, let me fix that,” or “try again.” “Fantastic” might pass muster, or “terrific,” or “awesome,” but there are really only the two alternatives: perfect and wrecked.

It gets tiresome trying to think of acceptable adjectives. (No one ever looks truly perfect on the way out of the house, not even supermodels. Their shoes are one shade off the perfect tone of red, their earrings are too long, or their hair has a strand or two of frizz. Or, as Coco Chanel advised, they should take off one accessory. But I digress again.)

There’s a saying: Perfect is the enemy of good. But let’s consider good and good enough. Good sounds like it ought to be better than good enough, but it isn’t always. One problem is that you can’t always tell when something you’ve done is truly good. Good enough is sometimes better than good, and really preferable to perfect.

Improvement is a good thing. Revision is often necessary, and there are certain processes in which improvement is almost certainly required. Writing is among them (as are many other arts). Someone who sends a “completed” manuscript to a magazine or book publisher—or even an agent—is just asking for a rejection slip. Any piece of writing can use improvement. Every first draft can use improvement. (There are certain times, like when you’re designing a space suit, that only perfect will do. (Though if you consider Apollo 13, even a lack of perfection isn’t always a death sentence.) But I digress yet again.)

Not recognizing good enough is a problem, though. You can easily get stuck revising again and again, chasing the idea of perfection. Perfection keeps receding in the distance, especially since revisions can at times introduce new flaws or muddy the work. At some point, you simply have to throw up your hands and say, “Good enough,” or at least put what you’re doing away for a while and let it mellow.

This may lead you to believe that deadlines are the enemy of good enough. When you have a hard deadline, you have to finish something whether or not you think it’s good enough. Most times it will be, and if not, there’s an editor, boss, coach, or client who will gladly point out what else your work needs.

It must be said, though, that awful is a waypoint on the path to good enough. You start with something awful and you better and betterer it until it’s good enough (but never perfect). This is true of everything. (Dan looks awful first thing in the morning. It takes time and effort to get him up to “wrecked.” But I digress some more.) Your first draft of a piece of writing. Your first time trying to recreate a dish your grandma used to make (without a recipe). Your first time trying to pole vault. Even your first attempt at designing a space suit.

So, if you’re trying an endeavor, whether an artistic pursuit or simply getting ready in the morning, remember not to strive for perfect. My advice: Strive for better and settle for good enough. You’ll be happier without the added pressure of an impossible goal!

An Itchy and Scratchy Childhood

etc.

When I was a child, I had every kind of rash known to God and man, and probably a few known only to God.

Of course, in my pre-Girl Scout days, there was poison ivy. Before that, even, it turned out that I was allergic to Mr. Bubble and couldn’t indulge in that sensory delight without adverse reactions in awkward and inconvenient places. And once, I accidentally sat down in a spot in the yard that was already claimed by a hill of ants. Both of us found that encounter irritating.

But mostly I remember the many times I had itchy diseases. (Okay, this was before vaccines were available. I’m old. These conditions were part of every Boomer’s youth. But I digress.)

For starters, I had chickenpox. Back then, it wasn’t trendy to have “chickenpox parties” to pass around a supposedly mild case of the disease to all the children in the neighborhood on purpose instead of through normal transmission. I can’t believe it has to be said that it’s a bad idea. For one thing, there’s no guarantee that a case caught at such a party will indeed be mild.

Then there were the various varieties of measles. I had the German kind, the all-American ones, and even a measles-like illness called “fifth disease.” (I had to look it up to make sure I wasn’t misremembering this. It’s a real thing, an infection caused by a parvovirus, highly contagious and spread through coughing or sneezing. It’s also called “slapped cheek disease,” which is more descriptive than “fifth disease.” The name comes from being the fifth of six viral skin rashes of childhood, the others being measles, scarlet fever, rubella (German measles), something called “Duke’s disease” that I may not have had and refuse to research further at this time, and roseola. But I digress again.)

People who didn’t live through them (that is to say, non-Boomers) generally consider these illnesses to be mild inconveniences. They weren’t. When I had one type of measles (I don’t remember which kind), my fever was so high that I began to hallucinate. We were traveling when it happened, and from the back seat of the car, I thought I saw seagulls circling Cincinnati. By the time we got to our destination, I was seeing birds on a clothesline where there wasn’t even a clothesline.

High fevers weren’t the only hazards of childhood illness, however. Mumps—which of course I also got—could cause sterility in adult men. Rubella was known to cause birth defects such as hearing and vision loss and heart defects if a pregnant woman happened to catch the disease. Then there was whooping cough. I never got it, but whenever I did have a cough, my father would listen anxiously in case I developed the telltale sounds that give the life-threatening disease its name.

Fortunately, I didn’t have close brushes with any of the more dire diseases that parents feared. Most of my childhood came after the polio vaccine had become available, so that was a biggie taken off the table. And of course, I still have the faint scar from my smallpox vaccination, something that isn’t even a thing anymore. I do remember the entire junior high being tested for TB, lining up to be injected by a big rivet-gun-looking thing, but as far as I know, no one had it.

(A woman I worked with once revealed that when she was a child, her school required all students to get a tattoo stating their blood type. I can just imagine how well that would go over nowadays. But I digress some more.)

Anyway, the point I’m meandering toward is that childhood diseases are no joke and vaccines are a godsend. Most of us Boomers can attest to that. So pay attention. If you do, you can even stay on my lawn.