The Word Murderer

I love words. They are my playthings. I tell people that when I was a child my favorite toys were string, dirt, and words. (And if I’m being honest about this list, probably also paper. Lots and lots of paper. And scissors and glue. Paper and scissors and glue can provide endless amounts of rainy afternoon amusement.) But words…. Oh how I love them. They are physical objects that have shape and form in my mouth. Plethora. Pink. Bohemian. (You’re saying these out loud right now, aren’t you?) Maneuver. Slacks.

Slacks is my very favorite word of all time. It fills your entire mouth, rolling from the front of the mouth to the back to the front again. I’ve been known to just say the word “slacks” over and over and over and over without any context whatsoever. Some of these instances may have been booze-fueled, but I openly admit that many of them have happened while I was stone sober. I just really love saying “slacks”. And if anyone else happens to casually drop the word into a conversation in proper context, I will start giggling for (unless you know me well enough to know my obsession with the word) what seems to be absolutely no reason. And then trying to explain why I just started giggling at what the speaker probably thinks is a perfectly sane and valid word is just……inexplicable.

Akin to my love of language is a certain, hmmm, let’s call it pickiness, in regards to grammar. I inherited this pickiness from my parents, who inherited it from their parents. Grammar mistakes at the dinner table did NOT go uncorrected. If I were to say “Me and Hortense went to the hippopotamus store today,” my father would immediately have responded with “Hortense and I, Butternut, Hortense and I!” My grandfather tried to be a bit cleverer with his correction. He would ask, “Why is Hortense mean?” Because, you know, “me and” sounds so much like “mean”. (I said *tried* to be cleverer. I didn’t say succeeded.) Other linguistic quirks that were not tolerated were misuse or mispronunciation of words and/or sayings or phrases. Family pet peeves included “whole nuther”, “for all intensive purposes”, and “could care less”.

All of this drilling has resulted in me having the same sort of cringe reaction to poor grammar and word usage as I do to things like the sound of people chewing or the sound of styrofoam rubbing against itself. (It makes a most horrid squeak. The sound causes me actual, physical pain.) I’ve social skills enough to know better than to go around correcting other people’s grammar, pronunciation, and word usage. (Unless by other people we mean my husband and children, and they are oft corrected. And that is only because I love them and do not want them to sound illiterate.) But the cringing, oh the cringing. The speech patterns of a certain current political person – whom I will not dignify by naming or even labeling by position, but who much resembles an angry mango – are to me much like an ice pick to the eardrums.

I’m also kind of persnickety about the written word. I know it would be best if I just avoided the comment section of Facebook altogether, but it’s like gawking at an accident on the side of the road. The egregious mix-ups of they’re/there/their, to/too/two, and your/you’re make me sad for humanity and certainly render the commenter’s point moot. (Note that’s moot and not mute – the point is not incapable of speech, it is invalid. They’re two totally different words. Really y’all.) Also, I have very strong opinions about the Oxford comma. I am a big fan. I am also a big fan of Vampire Weekend even if they don’t give a fuck about the Oxford comma. And I would NEVER lie to them about how much coal I have. Why would I lie about something dumb like that? Why would I lie about anything at all? (I love that song so very much.)

So, having established this as background, let me tell you a bit about my job. I work for a very large, very well-known, multi-national corporation in a marketing/PR sort of-ish position. I and my coworkers (note that I did NOT say “me and my coworkers” because they are not mean) spend a good portion of our time on the phone with people outside of our organization. I spend most of my time talking to young mothers about poop. I am the Poop Whisperer of my shared office space. The other ladies in the room talk to consumers about things not related to poop. There are five of us in our shared space, along with a supervisor. And this is where the story gets sticky.

My supervisor, who, along with supervising us, the phone-talkers, also does a good bit of phone talking because that’s primarily what we do in this office. We talk to people outside of our organization as representatives of our very large, very well-known, multi-national corporation. And she can’t speak English. Like, she can’t say words. It’s baffling. I have never not once heard her say “supposed to”. It’s always either “opposed to” or just “posta”. She says fessball for festival – today she was going on and on and on about a punkin fessball, which she went to last year. She said”punkin” about twenty times in the span of about 90 seconds. This year she went to a batato fessball where she ate all kinds of batato foods like mashed and fried and SHE SAID BATATO!!!!

She adds the letter T into words randomly, but takes it out if it belongs there. The mop thing that you use to clean floors is a Swifter. Makes me wonder if there is perhaps a Less Swift or a Swiftest. You can buy said Swifter at a Walmark’s. She also said she wouldn’t check baggage on a plane because she was afraid it would get ramshacked and someone would steal her stuff. Today she told a lovely little story about a boy and his gadora – you know, the old fashioned hat that men wore with suits.

Also, any anecdote she tells will involve her saying repeatedly, “I says I says I says I says” like some female, nasal sounding incarnation of Foghorn Leghorn. And her grammar. Oh my sweet lord. She has a gift for mismatching her tenses and subject/verb number agreements. And I just sit here, without comment, wanting to bang my head on my desk. It wouldn’t be so awful if she weren’t my supervisor and in charge of representing our company on the phone to the public. I mean, how did she even get through the job interview? Why would anyone hire this word murderer to be their representative to the public? The other big gear grinder that makes things so much worse is that she is ever so condescending. My god, this woman can shut you down so hard that not only do you not know what you’re talking about, you aren’t even actually saying the words that are coming out of your mouth. That level of shut-down is a special talent.

So there’s that part of my life. I do really, really love my job. I love talking to moms about poop. I’m not being sarcastic or ironic about that. I like the interaction with people and poop is amusing. And almost everyone else I work with is amazing. It’s just this one woman. This one word murderer.