Recently I ran into a couple I hadn’t seen for a long time.
While chatting with them it struck me how some married couples have
wildly different communication skills and preferences – even
couples that have been wed for a thousand years may talk like
they’ve been occupying different planets.
Recently I ran into a couple I hadn’t seen for a long time. While chatting with them it struck me how some married couples have wildly different communication skills and preferences – even couples that have been wed for a thousand years may talk like they’ve been occupying different planets. While one spouse prattles on about this or that, the best you get from the other is an occasional reluctant mumble.
It makes me wonder what goes on at home. Does the spouse-in-the-shell ever get chatty? Do they prefer hanging out with separate friends, one group employing the yakkity-yak while the others converse in monosyllables? Is this sort of thing covered in prenuptial agreements?
Mismatched spousal communications aside, these days the art of polite discourse has gotten a little sloppy. Take for instance the dawn of the weird mixed-message conundrum. This incongruity is virtually everyday dialogue. Recently my friend Linda and her hubby couldn’t help overhearing one such conversation taking place at a nearby table while they were enjoying dinner.
“I just love her to death,” a woman was saying, “but …”
Yes, it’s the OTHER kind of “BIG BUT” and is a sly little conversational tool of negativity slipped in to follow what started out as a good thing. Warning: don’t be fooled; the “BIG BUT” is anything but nice. It is the kiss of death. And there are oh, so many ways the harmless-seeming three-letter “BUT” creeps into conversations:
“You know I love Maxine to pieces, but she is without a doubt the world’s worst cook.”
Or “I love your new make-up, Wilma, but do you think that lipstick is too orange for your complexion?”
And “Your work here at LaborMax has been outstanding, Harold, but I notice you’re going through an awful lot of pencils.”
I don’t know the source of all this build-’em-up and tear-’em-down mentality. A little passive-aggressiveness perhaps? Or maybe we have a need to appear nice before we bring down the ax. Who knows, although I’m sure watching my “buts” these days.
And don’t get me started on a couple of other current language trends. I’m talking about the dreaded “like” and the even more unbearable “all” – two words that are being sprinkled like fairy dust through dialogue these days.
Standing in line in front of a couple of teens at a coffee place not long ago I was much more privy to their gossip than I wanted to be.
First girl: “I thought Jessica was, like, so OVER him. When I found out she was, like, going out with him again I, like, wanted to puke.”
Second girl: “I KNOW, dude! (And what is this business about calling your BFF dude? Huh?) I asked her why she went out with him after she said she, like, basically hated his guts, and she’s all, ‘I only went out with him because his dad was letting him drive the Ferrari,’ and I’m all, ‘Dude, that is so totally lame,’ and she’s all, ‘I know but what the (very bad word)? It was only for that one time and it wasn’t as if I was, like, totally gonna (same very bad word) him or something.”
Now imagine: what if your grandmother talked like this? If she’s still living, she wouldn’t be much longer for this world because it’d mean your grandmother is totally bonkers. Seriously. Call it economizing in the chatter department, but back in the day folks just didn’t drone on with a lot of superfluous verbiage. They said what they meant and meant what they said.
Fifty years ago, folks “minded their manners.” And they didn’t “style” their hair, they “fixed” it as in, “Gale, go fix your hair. It looks like rats have made a home in there.” And Grandma began practically every other sentence with, “Well, sir …” even when there wasn’t a “sir” visible for miles.
Yes, my Grandma Lilly knew how to get her point across. And she had some pretty cool words that you don’t hear much anymore. When Grandma got dressed up she wore her “earbobs.” She ate “roughage” because “fiber” was something found in fabric, not her food. And if she observed me drinking a Pepsi, she’d let me know that “all that pop will make you belch and rust your stomach!”
And, bless her, some of her utterances are probably better left behind. What we refer to today as “boots” or “galoshes” were – egads – “rubbers” back in the day. So you can imagine my horror the day back in high school when I was sitting with my heartthrob on the front porch swing and Grandma hollered to my grandpa as they were leaving for the afternoon, “Clarence, it looks like rain! Don’t forget your rubbers!!”
Yep, that’s what I’m talking about. Only Grandma could pull off a line like that.
