National Curmudgeon Day
**Rowland Croucher**
National Curmudgeon Day
By my favourite Curmedgeon, ex-parish Episcopalian priest
Harry T. Cook
7/02/09
If you are reading this essay, it's because my editor stopped rolling
her eyes and shaking her head from side to side long enough to format
and schedule it for posting. That editor does not want her best
non-paying customer to become like the prototypical old man sitting
sullenly on his front porch shaking his fist at passing cars.
I readily admit to being a curmudgeon on some issues, and I use this day
-- July 2, 2009, which by my own singular pronouncement is National
Curmudgeon Day -- to shake my fist at certain degradations and
imbecilities regularly committed against what's left of the English
language.
[Insert eye-roll here.]
It is almost impossible to conclude even the simplest retail transaction
without hearing the cashier chirp, "Have a good one!" In most cases, it
seems to be friendly enough, and I usually acknowledge the sentiment
with anything from a "You, too" to what I hope does not come across as a
curt "Thank you." Once, though, after I had heard the "Have a good one"
once too often, I stopped to ask, "A good one what?"
[Insert here that sound your teenaged daughter would make when you
warned her for the fifth time to be careful driving the family car.]
"I'm going to opt out of this discussion" is what a member of a board on
which I sat for some years was wont to say. She said it every time
someone didn't agree with her, which is annoying enough. But "opt out?"
She may think it's a euphemism for "screw you." If so, it's not a very
articulate one. "Opt out" needs to be removed from our common vocabulary.
[Insert signs of visible agitation here.]
"It's the consensus of opinion that ..." meaning that a certain
proposition has gathered a consensus to itself. "Consensus of opinion"
is a wordy pleonasm that needs to go away, though even "consensus" by
itself has become suspect. What's the matter with saying that those
debating whatever now "agree?"
[Insert "the look" here.]
The child or the dog or the pet iguana went missing. Went missing??? Out
from what murky swale of rhetorical mish-mash did that locution ooze?
What's the matter with saying that some one or some thing "is missing?"
Even better, "______'s whereabouts are unknown," at least to those who
are looking for _________. "Went missing" needs to go, but not "go missing."
[Insert desktop finger-drumming here.]
"Our thoughts and prayers go out to ..." This we know about thoughts:
they are an inward matter of the brain-mind axis. They may be expressed,
and often are, though not often particularly well. Prayers? Well,
depending on one's religious orientation, a prayer is spoken or unspoken
and in some imaginations it goes not "out" but "up" to an imagined deity.
When you hear "Our thoughts and prayers go out to . . ." what you are
hearing is a more or less heartfelt helplessness meant to reassure the
bereaved or the frightened or the anxious that others are caring, even
if they may not have a clue about what to do. Clearer by far and
certainly more helpful would be to say: "We care about you and will try
to do anything we can to get you through this." Of course, that would
invite the inference of a proffered helping hand that would be ours, and
not that of some religion's contrived deity.
[Insert look of resignation here.]
"Everything happens for a reason." As a member of a helping profession
active in it for going on 50 years, I heard that nostrum over and over
again until my teeth had been ground down in exasperation.
I shall never forget standing in an emergency room pod with a family
whose child had been seriously injured in an automobile accident and was
about to be taken to surgery. I anointed the child, not only with the
oleum infirmatum but with an unbidden tear or two of my own. I was
preparing to say to the anxiety-ridden family that the accident was one
of those terrible, random occurrences over which we have no control.
Just then a hospital chaplain who had inserted himself into the circle
said brightly, "Don't worry. Everything happens for a reason."
I wanted to anoint him, too, but with a very large bucket of cold water.
It took me the better part of a day to help that family understand that
the warped deity of the chaplain's warped imagination had nothing
whatsoever to do with causing the child's injuries.
Shortly thereafter I availed myself of a bumper sticker, popular at the
time, which proclaimed the evident fact of the matter: "SHIT HAPPENS." I
sent it to the chaplain with my compliments.
Here endeth the curmudgeonly lesson.
[Insert immense sigh of relief here.]
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/
Bob Crowley
Reminds me of one of my less than diplomatic comments. Having been
told a baby had been born to a happy couple, I commented "So another
little sucker has arrived eh?"
Or the time the old pastor asked me if I thought he'd get over the
cancer he had. I looked at him, thought about it and said, "No.".
He replied in a sarcastic tone of voice, "Boy, you sure know how to
cheer people up!"
Phred
>
>National Curmudgeon Day
>
>By my favourite Curmedgeon, ex-parish Episcopalian priest
>
>Harry T. Cook
>7/02/09
>I readily admit to being a curmudgeon on some issues, and I use this day
>-- July 2, 2009, which by my own singular pronouncement is National
>Curmudgeon Day -- to shake my fist at certain degradations and
>imbecilities regularly committed against what's left of the English
>language.
>
>
>Shortly thereafter I availed myself of a bumper sticker, ...
No comment. ;-)
Cheers, Phred.
--
ppnerk...@THISyahoo.com.INVALID