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.]