If I could give our country (the rest of the world may need it as well) a big present it would be the gift of good grammar. That may seem frivolous to some of you, but I really believe it might help us work through some of our social issues if people could only communicate respectfully, intelligently and easily. Good grammar promotes civility.
Home with a day off, I'm cleaning out closets and doing a general "de-junking" around the house after the Thanksgiving holiday. I have a longstanding habit of tossing my belongings around as if the world were my warehouse. Then, the morning before our crew arrives for our one o'clock meal, I feign the appearance of neatness by sticking things in every available opening. The following day the search is on....and I clean out places, drawers and closets looking for the things I salted away the day before. I'd call it a "ritual", but that would be giving my hoarding tendencies too much credit.
During this yearly cleaning frenzy I often listen to TV, and this morning my husband had the set in his den tuned into one of the "judge" shows that seem to fill the daytime airwaves. I could not...and would not....direct you to the program, but I can tell you we are in dire straits if this group parading before the microphones represents our country.
The slang is bad enough, and I understand it's a generational thing that I don't understand it. However, the constant banging on my eardrums with the word "like"........."she said, like, I don't know him....and I'm like, hell yeah you do....and she's like". And why do people with a mic in front of them feel compelled to say, "and, your honor, at that time she hit me in my face. And at that time I yelled." And it's all interlaced with, "and I have saw her do it"....and "she done did it".....or "she seen me coming". (I won't even go into the use of "bitches" as an acceptable description for anyone of either gender) It is not a grammatical error, but a full on assault of the language.
This awful television show is a perfect representation of conversations overheard daily. Our standard of communication has disintegrated to the point that the sound of an average conversation is really quite ugly. I often leave a public place thinking we sound like a nation of people with low intelligence and even lower standards of behavior.
If I had a magic wand I'd wave it and give everyone good vocabularies and an excellent command of the language. Maybe if we spoke differently to one another we would begin to behave better. It wouldn't have to sound as if everyone had attended Oxford....but just imagine someone making the ridiculous hand gestures and duck face after saying, "excuse me, but I would like to speak to your brother for just a moment." Wouldn't happen.
As our language shrinks to a vocabulary of four letter words, we create hostility simply by speaking. The words we hear thrown around so easily on television "reality" shows paint an ugly, uninhabitable world.
So.....as I look toward Christmas gift giving I wish I could give the gift of language skills to our country. If we're going to go down the tubes we can at least do it in a civil fashion...."after you....no, please....after you!"
I know it may not be the biggest thing we face in this country, but how can we solve any problems if we cannot communicate? If only the mouth worked like an automobile, nothing would happen till the brain was in gear. Unfortunately we're not on level ground any longer, so we are headed downhill at a very fast clip. I have no solution to offer, only observations.
One thing I do know. There are three words that are very hard to screw up. Use them...live them...believe them.....Life is Good.
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