This is something my college friends and I used to say when we noticed that we spoke with different prepositions or other idioms. Who said “stand in line” and who said “stand on line”? Who said “change for a quarter” versus “change of a quarter”? Is the thing you push in a supermarket a “cart,” “a buggy,” or a “wagon”? Was “wash” pronounced the way it looks, or had a pesky “r” sneaked in to make it sound like “warsh”? For that matter, why do some people say “My hair needs washed,” while others say, “My hair needs to be washed” or “my hair needs washing”? Why does one person say “ink pen” when that’s the only kind of pen there is?

(I’ll answer that last one. The person who said “ink pen” was reacting to something linguists call minimal pairs. Such pairs have a slight difference in pronunciation that some people can hear and others can’t. So, for example, if “pen” and “pin” aren’t a minimal pair for you, you may say things like “safety pin,” “straight pin,” and “ink pen.” But I digress.)

The linguistic principle I wanted to talk about today, though, is “code-switching” or “levels of diction.” Someone online was questioning why Kamala Harris sometimes spoke “standard” English and at other times seemed to speak in a different dialect altogether.

All of us are pretty fluent at code-switching, whether we know it or not. Basically, code-switching means that you don’t speak the same way you do to your grandmother or pastor as you do to, say, a teacher or boss, or people your own age. (This especially applies to teenagers.) For example, you are not likely at all to swear in front of your grandmother or pastor, rather unlikely to swear in front of a teacher or boss (unless you’re a longshoreman), but more likely to swear in front of people of your own age and background. Similarly, you are more likely to use nonstandard English (such as “ain’t”) with your friends than with your grandmother.

Your tone of voice, your use of slang, and even your accent may change, based on your audience. These are called “levels of diction.” 

This is what people were wondering about Kamala Harris. Was she being “fake” when she used a more ethnic-sounding voice? Was she being “fake” when she used formal, academic speech and language?

The answer is that her speech was not “fake” at either time. Harris was code-switching and probably wasn’t doing it consciously.

Most of us code-switch quite naturally, without even thinking about it. (Once our mothers have biffed us on the back of the head for “disrespecting” Grandma.) Oh, we may feel like we’re not being our “true selves” when we tone it down for Grandma or ditch a Kentucky accent for a speech contest or podcast, but after a while it’s automatic.

It’s also a very valuable skill to have. Imagine having only one way to speak! You’d be insulting people right and left. Your Grandma might think you were talking like a sailor or your homies might think you were talking stilted and better-than-thou.

If you pay attention, you may even catch yourself code-switching or notice when someone else is doing it.

The disagreements my college friends and I had were not actually about code-switching, but about regional variations in vocabulary. For anyone interested, where I live now, the standards are wait “in” line, change “for” a quarter, and shopping “cart.” From just that, a talented linguist could tell where I live (Ohio). (I still say “ink pen,” but that’s a holdover from where I was born, in Kentucky.)

That’s all for today. Go listen for some code-switching or compare prepositions and vocabulary with your friends. I have to leave. My hair needs washed.

I’ve been looking back through my Facebook “memories” lately, and if there’s one thing I learned, it’s that I now live much more in the meme than I did before.

Time was, I made posts about what my husband and I were doing, what was happening with our cats, meals we’d cooked, and how I felt. I even had a series of posts – “Who the Hell Cares” Headline of the Day, Stupidest Headline of the Day (So Far), and a few other labels.

Now I don’t bother.

It may be because I didn’t get much response to the things I posted, though that may be attributable to how few Facebook friends I had back in the day as compared to now. It may be because I studiously avoided posting anything political or religious, topics sure to invite controversy and responses. Cute kitten pictures was about as socially conscious as I got.

Once I tried to make my own memes to promote my blogs. I didn’t really know how to make memes and tried to do them in Powerpoint, which didn’t really work all that well. I’m sure now there’s some kind of meme creator program that everyone but me knows about.

Another problem with my self-made memes was that they weren’t short and punchy. I tried to mine my blogs for content, but all I came up with were long sentences with lots of punctuation, things like “Children’s literature crafted with imagination can free the spirit in adults as well as children. It’s something we all need.” I even accompanied that one with a photo of a book and some imaginative children’s toys – dragon, spaceship. But it wasn’t snappy. It wasn’t memorable. 

Here’s another one, which I didn’t even have a picture for: “The mind and body and soul are inextricably intertwined. We know this to be true. Depression affects them all.” Then just my name and the address of my blog. Wordy. Unmemorable.

I’m not sure I could do much better now. My blogs resist mining for gems of wisdom. And I still don’t know how to construct not-very-good memes in Powerpoint or any other program.

Besides, there are lots of memes that resonate with me and are already there for me to like and pass along.

“If art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.”

Or political or social justice memes that I am no longer so shy about having on my own timeline:

While you’re worried about the “bad apples”

We’re wary of the roots

Because no healthy tree

Naturally bears strange fruit

That is brilliant. It’s a whole poem, conveys an important message, and contains an allusion to “Strange Fruit,” which was a Billie Holiday song about lynchings. No photo or fancy artwork even needed. Just the words, sufficient to think about, expressed succinctly and cleverly.

I do comment on other people’s blog posts and even get into conversations with them. I post links to my blog to Facebook and any appropriate groups I belong to. People like or comment on the memes I post and sometimes even pass them along themselves, especially now that I’ve somewhat gotten over my avoidance of political and social justice memes. (I mean, if Ted Nugent can share his opinions on politics, why shouldn’t I?)

Perhaps I shouldn’t worry about only passing along others’ content instead of creating my own memes. I have plenty of other stuff to do online, like writing my two blogs, and offline, like the novel I’m writing that I haven’t gotten back to in quite a while. (I sometimes wonder if I should abandon this blog, which doesn’t have what you’d call a large following, to work on that instead. But I digress.)

There’s something satisfying to my soul about the blogging and the novel in a way that creating memes just doesn’t have. Still, perhaps I should share more about my life than pictures of my adorable cats. On the other hand, that’s giving the people what they really want.

Almost universally, parents experience the ritual of teaching children to say the “magic words”: please and thank you.  Many children get the idea that there is only one magic word: “please-and-thank-you.” It’s considered a triumph when children begin to use the words spontaneously.

However, the practice of calling them “magic words” seems to convey to children that if they use them, their wish will be granted. They will receive the candy, the toy, the outing, whatever is the object of their desire. This may be because the desired object is something a parent already intends to give the child. In essence, this is a bribe intended to get the child to say “please-and-thank-you.”

When the magic words don’t work – when the child is asking for something the parent is unable or unwilling to give – little Evan or Marguerite is disappointed, even upset to the point of melt-down. It’s a sad lesson in life that there really are no magic words that result in wish-fulfillment.

Instead of bribing kids into saying please and thank you, I recommend using another old standby of child raising: The notion that children imitate adults.

But how often do children really see please and thank you – and that other essential phrase “you’re welcome” – used in the home or by parents? Manners can become a little lax when you see someone every day.

How difficult is it to say, quite naturally, “Please pass the salt” or “Please help me put away these groceries” or “Please keep the noise down. I’m going to have a nap”? And then thank the other adult when she or he complies. How often do we say, “You’re welcome” when you give someone something they have requested? And how often do we say “please” and “thank you” sarcastically, as if they shouldn’t have to be said at all? 

While family life gives plenty of opportunities for demonstrating the proper way to use the magic words, so too do interactions in the outside world. How many of us remember to say “thank you” to the server who brings our food? How many forget the “please” in the simple sentence, “Please bring me a glass of water”? When thanked by a person you’ve helped in some way, do you answer, “You’re welcome” or at least “No problem,” the modern-day equivalent?

Personally, I think that the most important time to use the words, “please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome” is within the family. They are words of acknowledgment, appreciation, and good will that surely our family members deserve. If it feels weird to say these words to your partner, ask yourself why. Do you feel that less politeness is due to family members than to a stranger? I think they deserve more. 

Of course, in daily interactions, it’s easy to forget saying please and thank you to someone you know so well. Their compliance is assumed, so much so that the sentence, “No, I can’t help you with the groceries” is shocking.

But that’s another thing that children need to learn – that sometimes their requests, even prefaced with the magic words, will receive a negative response. Then they have a chance to learn the words “I’m sorry,” as in “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were on the phone” or “I’m sorry. I can’t help right now, but give me ten minutes and I will.”

My point is that please-and-thank-you aren’t magic words at all, that you’re welcome and I’m sorry should go along with them, and that using them as everyday words within your household is the best way to teach them.

After all, don’t we also say, “Children learn what they live”?

In the last 15 months, I have lived in five different places: a Red Cross shelter, a budget motel, a hotel suite, a rented house, and a one-bedroom apartment. A couple of weeks ago, we moved back into our home again.

It’s not exactly the same as our old house, though it is on the same lot and same foundation. In the aftermath of the tornado, we were able to make a few modifications to the plans. We enlarged the master bedroom to accommodate a reading nook with two comfy chairs and a standing lamp. We enlarged the downstairs bathroom and put in a shower. This made my study a little smaller, but the convenience has proved to be worth it.

My study (or “the smallest bedroom,” as our contractor called it) is a definite improvement over where I did my writing at the last place we lived, the one-bedroom apartment. There I had to do my work and write my blogs in the apartment’s supposed laundry area, with my computer propped up on four totes and two boards. The cat box was located there too, which inspired me to write quickly.

Much of our furniture was ruined in the aftermath of the tornado, so we had a veritable shopping spree replacing it. What we acquired was an eclectic mix of new high-quality items (the insurance paid for these), secondhand or antique furniture such as a huge hutch and a grandfather clock (one of Dan’s lifelong dreams), plus assorted cheap-o stuff that we ordered off the internet. (My study’s comfy chair turned out to be a pleasant surprise, being as comfy as advertised and fitting in beautifully with my warm spice-colored walls.)

It was during one of these furniture deliveries that my husband learned something he had never known about me. When our furniture and appliances were delivered, I tipped the delivery guys for their sometimes-considerable efforts. Dan’s curio cabinet was a different matter.

The delivery instructions only covered placing the huge (already assembled) item inside the front door. It needed to be upstairs, in my husband’s study (“the small upstairs bedroom”). As we gathered inside the front door and looked at the giant package, I piped up, “I’ll give you $20 if you take it upstairs.”

“Where upstairs?” Delivery Dude asked.

“The room right at the top of the stairs.”

The two guys looked at each other.  “Okay, ” they said. (Little did they know that I would probably have given them $20 or thereabouts simply for having toted it down our long, sloping, unpaved driveway.)

Dan looked at me in astonishment. Apparently he had never imagined that I knew how to bribe someone.

My career in bribery is not extensive, but I have had my moments. Once – before 9/11, of course – I bribed a curbside redcap to put my bag on a plane other than the one I was ticketed for. (My boss had made me change my departure time to arrive at the business convention earlier than planned.)

A coworker had described the official procedure, which was to dangle a $10 bill from the hand that clutched the handle of the luggage. I added my own twist to this by clutching the money with one hand while I dug in my purse for the elusive ticket that “I was sure my boss gave me.” A little helpless female pantomime (which I loathed myself for), and the bag and I both traveled on the earlier plane. (I exchanged my ticket once I got inside the terminal.)

It turns out, of course, that my husband was grateful for my underhanded skills, since it got him his curio up the stairs without his having to strain his back. But I don’t think he’ll ever look at me the same way again. After over 35 years of marriage, it’s good to know that I can still surprise him.

Seventeen. That’s what the nurse said.

My husband had just narrowly avoided a serious heart attack, forestalled by an addition to the collection of metal in his chest. This was his fifth or sixth stent. (I’ve lost count. Fortunately, his cardiologist hadn’t.)

The food service at the hospital was excellent. Dan was allowed to choose from a menu that included restaurant-quality meals, including salmon stir-fry. Each was carefully marked with nutrition information – sodium, fats, carbs, etc. When Dan went over the limit on his restrictions, the kitchen would let him know and suggest he try a different salad dressing, for example. Once he even saved enough points on his meal that he was able to select a teensy sliver of low-fat cheesecake. It was nearly invisible, but enough to satisfy a longing.

Because my husband also has diabetes, on his discharge day an R.N. appeared to talk to him about his diet. The nurse was incredibly knowledgeable. My husband is fairly knowledgeable, too. He knows that fruits contain a fair amount of sugar, but he loves fruit and thought they would be a better choice for snacks and desserts than, say, ice cream or pecan turtles.

The nurse’s spiel was enlightening. He told Dan how much of each fruit he could safely consume. One quarter cup of watermelon. A small apple or orange (he illustrated the size with his hands), and so on.

I knew that one of Dan’s favorite snacks was grapes, the big red seedless kind. So I asked.

“Grapes?” I inquired.

“Seventeen,” said the nurse. No hesitation. Not a moment’s thought. No consulting a chart or a diet list. This man had memorized all the information about all the fruits, apparently, and had it on the tip of his tongue (so to speak).

I goggled. “Seventeen?” I echoed.

“Seventeen grapes,” he said. “That’s the proper serving size.”

Who was I to argue?

On his next trip to the store, Dan indeed brought home a bag of those wonderful red grapes. Shortly, he was sitting on the sofa eating them while watching TV, popping them in his mouth like popcorn.

I counted. “One,” I said.

“One,” he repeated.

“Two,” I said.

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Three.”

“That’s not three! You’ve already eaten three,” I exclaimed.

He popped another grape in his mouth. “Five,” I said.

“Three,” he replied.

It went on like this for a while. “Six.” “Three.” “Seven.” “Three.”

Once I even tried skipping nine and going straight to ten to see if he would protest.

He didn’t.  “Three,” he replied calmly.

When Dan’s in this mood (entranced by grapes), there’s no arguing with him. He’s stubborn, and fully capable of repeating “three” while I count up to 286. (I think that was all the grapes in the bag.) He actually did stop eating the grapes right around 17, though, with a smug look on his face.

Just before he came home I had bought a watermelon – a small one – knowing how much he loved them – perhaps even more than grapes. I have no doubt that he’s hidden the measuring cups so I can’t monitor his watermelon intake, too.

Words matter. What we call people matters. Making distinctions among words matters. Take protestors, rioters, terrorists, and thugs. What do these terms mean and what do we mean when we say them?

Lately, the words protestor, rioter, terrorist, and thug have been flung around indiscriminately and seem to mean little more than “people I object to” or “people who behave in a way I don’t like.” But there are differences, subtle as they may be.

Protesters, well, protest something. Anything, really – wearing masks, not wearing masks, any government policy you’d care to name, any social cause or its opposite. They are people saying, “no.”

Generally, you can recognize protesters by their behavior. They carry signs. They march. They chant. And yes, sometimes they act in inconvenient ways, like blocking streets or bridges. This is not new. When the price of gas grew too high and highway speed limits too low, truckers slowed down and drove side-by-side, which mightily annoyed the people behind them, but was a nonviolent protest.

Most, though not all, protesters, are committed to nonviolent actions – sit-ins, street theater, boycotts, and other sorts of behavior espoused by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Rioters, well, riot. They smash things. Sometimes they set fires. Very occasionally they commit violence against persons. If you push protesters too far or ignore them long enough, they can turn into rioters, though the nonviolent protesters outnumber the violent ones. Rioters are usually motivated by the same kinds of issues as protesters. They just take it farther and abandon Gandhi and MLK.

Let’s talk about looters, while we’re at it. Looters are opportunists, who take advantage of the social unrest caused by rioters. They have no social or political position to support or denounce. They just want to get what they can out of the social unrest that rioting and the response to rioting cause.

(It is interesting to note that, after a hurricane in Florida, newspapers printed pictures of black people “looting” damaged stores, while white people in nearly identical pictures were said to be “salvaging” items from damaged stores. But I digress.)

Terrorists, well, create terror. They are not common criminals and have no obvious positions to support or oppose. Those come later, in a manifesto issued by individuals or groups that may or may not have committed the terrorism. At first, there were only terrorists, who were assumed to come from other countries. Now we have another variety, domestic terrorists, who are from the US and operate in the US. Think Timothy McVeigh.

Generally, terrorism has no apparent motive, except to make people afraid to do the things they normally do, such as run in marathons, open mail or packages, or drop their kids off at daycare. The terror is, at first, random, and is meant to be. What do terrorists want? is the common puzzle. After we’ve dismissed the easy answers, like “They hate us,” the answer is usually, simply, they want us to fear them and fear living our daily lives. Often, people with no connection to a terrorist act take “credit” for them to push their own agendas. If they leave no manifesto, we readily fill in the blanks of what they were trying to “say.”

As for thugs, this is a code word for “black people behaving badly,” based on whatever the person perceives as behaving badly. Robbing strangers, sure. But also assembling in groups or committing petty crimes, or looking menacing without necessarily doing anything menacing, or playing music too loud. Or, for that matter, going into spaces that white people consider “theirs,” where the thugs obviously don’t “belong” – gated communities, suburban swimming pools, public parks.

The term “thugs” is almost never applied to anyone white. White youth (usually) who cause disruptions are commonly called delinquents or disturbers of the peace. They are charged with misdemeanors or given tickets rather than brought to trial.

Of course, this is just an exercise in linguistics. I don’t really expect people to start differentiating and calling groups or individuals what they really are. But, as I said in the beginning, words matter. Especially the words we apply to other people.

I often decry the lack of sanity in society and especially in politics, but in a way, I do sort of understand.

I sort of understand why people are so reluctant to trust “Big Pharma” when it comes to anything health-related. Big Pharma has been systematically alienating the American public with widely publicized scandals such as the exorbitant prices for insulin and other drugs that actually cost pennies to manufacture. (Of course, the manufacturing is the least of it. The real costs come from years of R&D, testing, regulation, and getting approvals. Those costs, along with advertising, are passed along to consumers. But I digress.)

Nor are drug prices the only missteps that make Big Pharma seem so untrustworthy. Think of all the drugs that have been recalled because of the side effects, all the way from diet wonder-combo Fen-Phen to whatever the latest faulty blood pressure drug is. Count the number of ads you see on TV for lawyers offering you big settlements for drugs and medical devices that proved to be hazardous. Then ask yourself, how did all these hazards get so far in the approval process?

The problem is that with COVID-19, the medical establishment is all we have. The cure or the vaccine will inevitably come from Big Pharma, be tested by the FDA, and be sold for whatever price recoups the costs to develop it, which will not be small. (That’s if we get a vaccine at all. Forty years into the AIDS crisis and still no vaccine for that.) And the anti-vaxxers and others will refuse to take the vaccine anyway, thus diminishing the possibility of herd immunity.

And I almost understand why people no longer trust the political system. There have been scandals through the ages in America, including Nixon’s Watergate, the oldest scandal that people are likely to remember. It doesn’t even really matter the politician’s name, office, or party. There have been so many screw-ups, dirty tricks, smear campaigns, and outright lies from all sides that by now no one trusts anyone who runs for office, much less anyone who gets elected. (This is not to say that there are no differences among the various players, just that no one group holds the answer to Ultimate Truth.)

The problem we have is that the system we have is the system we have. It’s the old problem of trying to turn a battleship in a harbor. Most people think that our political systems need changing, but such systems are unwieldy and hard to change – and agreeing on what those changes ought to be is becoming further and further from possible.

So I can see why Big Pharma and the government are held in such low repute these days. Unfortunately, there is no one else who can help us out of our latest crises. Pharmaceutical companies will have to solve the mysteries of COVID-19, and the government (at some level) will have to develop a policy (or, as it seems more likely, various policies) for dealing with the crisis.

What I don’t understand are the assorted conspiracy theories that are popping up like unholy dandelions – QAnon, the deep state, the New World Order, etc. Even if he could do it, why would Bill Gates want to microchip everybody? I can’t imagine that he’s the least interested in where I am and what I’m doing – or if he were, he’d be very, very bored.  (Regular vaccination needles can’t be used to microchip anyway, but never mind that. We have a supervillain to contend with.)

I myself would be annoyed by a totally cashless society, especially considering the lovely furniture I just bought from a guy who takes only cash, and the fact that I need quarters to do my laundry. But I just don’t see how no cash equals the Number of the Beast or the Antichrist or whatever. And if you’re worried about Big Brother knowing every time you purchase toilet paper, think about all the info that’s already out there about you, starting with your social security number, driver’s license, and cell phone. Yes, it’s creepy that department stores notice that you’ve bought a home pregnancy test and start sending you ads for diapers, but that’s a long, long way from a One World Government. The United Nations can’t even get along for long enough to decide on much. Who actually thinks they could pull off a coup on every nation on earth?

What’s the bottom line? We’re going to have to trust Big Pharma and the government regulators until a solution is found for COVID. Then we need to put some safeguards in place so that unsafe drugs that cost a fortune don’t get rammed through the approval process. We’re going to have to vote for the choices of candidates put before us until we grow so tired of political gridlock that we actually make some changes and hold our officials accountable for what they do in office and afterward. That will involve massive political and social action and, frankly, a leader I don’t see on the horizon as of yet.

But I think we’ve all watched too many Jerry Bruckheimer movies and read too many Tom Clancy novels. The kinds of conspiracies people fear are simply not possible – not practical, not doable. From the McMartin Preschool scandal to the Jade Helm exercises, there is no way to hide such an involved and byzantine conspiracy. It’s impossible to plot something that big with no leaks or slip-ups or turncoats.

So, let’s settle down and do what we can do to solve the problems that we might be able to solve. Right now the two biggest problems that I can see are COVID and the mess in Washington. Let’s concentrate on those and see if we can’t at least do something to alleviate them, even if the ultimate cures continue to elude us. Then we can move on to something really important, like whether pizza restaurants with no basements can run child sex rings from their basements.