Garage for sell

According to the Bible, it all started at the Tower of Babel.   God chose to take one language spoken by all people and suddenly make people speak all sorts of different languages and “scattered them over the face of the earth”.  Why that act was deemed necessary to the creator is material for another day.  The point here is that suddenly the ability to communicate became a HUGE challenge.   No doubt it took a few years for bilingual jobs to open up at the airlines, mortgage companies, and credit card companies so people would have some kind of hope of doing business with someone whose language suddenly became foreign to their own. 

It would be interesting to take a glimpse into the initial attempts of communicating after the incredible Tower experience.  Probably went kind of like when I told the Mexican Federale at a military checkpoint somewhere in Middleofnowhere, Mexico that he didn’t speak Spanish.  The guy with the machine gun held tightly against his chest just didn’t have any kind of sense of humor.  Sure was funny to me after I found out what I said.  He wasn’t at all as light hearted as George Lopez.  Knowing another language would have come in handy when I was dragged out of a car in the Dominican Republic and threatened to be beaten severely with a rather large club by a rather large and slightly irate Dominican national.  Seems as though the Dominican guy driving a bunch of gringos around in his car was mistaken for a ‘pirate’ taxi driver who was stealing business from those ticked off (did I say rather large?) taxi drivers AND a cop who was looking out after the city’s best interests (and tax pesos).  I really, really, really wanted to be able to tell them quickly, clearly, and urgently that it wasn’t a taxi we were in and we weren’t stealing their business..... and to take the girl instead of me.

My friend Juli had an incident that helped her understand the importance of language and communication.  Arby’s in Wichita, Kansas where Juli and I grew up had a great ice cream shake that was called a “Black Cow”.  Those were great tasting and awesome treats.  However, either the name of the shake didn’t last long and was changed, or they were called “Jamocha Shakes” in other areas.  When she moved to Texas and went to Arby’s and asked the rather large African American cashier if she could have a Black Cow….well, let’s just say that almost ended badly.

Same language communication is a huge challenge at best.  The number one marital problem forever has been communication.  WTHeck??  We speak the same language?!  What’s the deal??  Not saying anything, regardless of the language spoken is never going to help, however.   Not always apparently.  I read something the other day that went something like, “When women are nagging it shows they still care.  When they’re silent it means they’re plotting your death.”  Mmmm hmmmm.

Top that with attempts at communicating that end up with being misunderstood or misinterpreted when you are not able to articulate exactly what you r heart or mind intends.  And there are always those like my Mom (bless her heart), who doesn’t really have a filter.  I had a nice chat with her a few years ago…one of those chats that indicates the beginning of parenting your parents.  I said, “Mom…just because it’s in your head, doesn’t mean it has to fly out of your mouth.”   There are so many fine points of communication that make it difficult at best.  Like tact….Mom (I love you! ).

What really bothers me is that with an already gargantuan challenge of communication that looms over most of our heads,  people don’t seem to take words seriously any more.  The following was take directly from a Craigslist ad tonight:  “garage sell, lots of items”.  If there would have been more description, it probably would have said, “garage sell, lots of items to sale”!  WHAT??!!  If the preceding description makes perfect sense to you, you might as well stop reading and go back to Facebook or whatever you were doing when you wandered to this page because the rest of this just might make you mad!  And shame on you!! J

There are always going to be those regional colloquial weird statements around.  They add color (mostly red color to the neck region) to our lives.  I had a friend from Mississippi who said one time, “That mater gravy is so good it’ll make you want to slap your mama!”  One guy from rural Illinois called difficult people “persnickety”.  There was also a regional convenience store which a couple of years ago had two sets of cups by the soft drink fountains.  One had “soda” written on it, and the other set had “pop” written on it.  You picked what you tended most to call the soft drink and that cup counted as a vote for “pop” or “soda”.  I can’t remember which word was most common around here.  I grew up drinking pop, Jody grew up drinking soda.  I remember wondering how stressed out the people were who stood there in front of those cups; the ones who call every kind of soft drink either “Coke” or “soda pop”.   I hope they found a good therapist.

I once had a philosophy student at Tulsa Community College that came out of the gangs of St. Louis.   We had a terrible time understanding each other.  Turns out I suck at ebonics and he sucked at philosophy.  So I made a deal with him…I’d tutor him in philosophy and he could tutor me in ebonics.  Turns out he passed philosophy and I still can’t understand rap.  Thanks anyway Jason, wherever you are!

“It’s steel cold outside.”

“It’s warmer then last winter.”

“I come over to see him.”

My friend Mike said the sound of such statements is like fingernails on a chalkboard to her.  I agree!  Call me weird, call me anal, call me intellectually prideful (implies first being intellectual though)…but it bothers me greatly to hear words misused.  Communication skills suck for most of us when the correct words are used!  Why muddy the water by screwing up perfectly good words?!  I’m sure there will be someone who will point out every grammatical error and spelling mistake in my brief rant, but I don’t care.  Do it! Call me on it!  Doggone it, words matter.  They mean something!  When they cease to mean what they were intended to mean, our hopes of communicating to one another are all but gone!   It’s always going to be that words will be added to the dictionary with new technology and trade language changing constantly.

Some people are silly enough to think that ‘spell check’ will save them.  Like me, many of us probably use a computer more than we write with pen and paper.  I said once, “Spell check can’t fix stupid”.  I know, I know, it’s kind of harsh.  But the wrong word spelled correctly in a sentence doesn’t really make it better or more clear.  Sheesh!   

A girl I went to high school with (go Indians!) is now a teacher in Houston.  Susan was having quite a challenge grading the 70 plus essays the other night.  Challenging because of this very issue.  The college exams I graded were disgusting.  These students couldn’t write any better, and in some cases worse than my 13 year old daughter.  Wow. 

What is the eventual consequence of this trend?  I’ve cited only a few examples.  There are a growing number of horrible examples that can be used.  What do we have to look forward to?  Babel 2: The Sequel?   Rodney Kings penetrating words :\  “Can’t we all just get along?” will never be realized if we don’t give a little more attention to words and how we use them.  Just a thought...