Probably for the rest of my life I will carry a certain amount of guiltfor things I thought and did in my childhood. Twelve years in a parochial school made a believer out of me.
Most of my scrapes came as the result of inappropriate laughter. Why was it permissible — and even encouraged — for elementary school kids to laugh, even to guffaw, when the teacher attempted humor, but never OK for me to try instigating some laughter on my own?
True, her humor was polished and refined; mine, banal. Our homeroom teacher at Immaculate Conception School, Sister Mary Sans L’Humour, never let a spurious giggle go unnoticed or unpunished.
And it’s the nature of the beast finally to catch the punch line to yesterday’s joke, while in church today or engaged in some other form of reverence.
“And Arthur, would you like to tell the class what you find so funny?” became almost a daily interrogative. The nun’s diurnal demand that I share the humor with the class was stressful, as I believe she often challenged me to cough up a situation that never even existed. That left me to try to conjure up an occasion for laughing.
Perpetually one who finds humor in things linguistic, I suspect I got into trouble a lot for my levity, for finding humor in situations in which one ought to be serious.
Indeed, throughout my professional life, I’ve been chided, or at least looked at askance, for giggling inappropriately or for smiling when others aren’t, prompting them to ask, “What’s so funny?”
I don’t believe I’ve ever had the right answer for that question, nor has the asker ever seemed to appreciate my levity or my explanation. I believe the what’s-so-funny? query reflects others’ fear that we’re laughing at them, and that isn’t always the case.
“What’s so funny?” ranks along with “What are you looking at?” usually asked by those embarrassed by having attracted a crowd. Angered by the situation that makes them the center of attention, naturally they’re going to be up-tight.
Once I noticed some locals on Chavez Street gathered around a car, hood up. I drove by slowly, slow enough for one of the crew to ask, “What you looking at?” His mien told me he was not about to invite me to exchange fudge brownie recipes.
I think my answer, — totally unrehearsed — surprised him. I said, “Want to use my jumper cables?” That’s all it took. It had indeed been a dead battery that crippled their car. And since then, things have gone smoothly between us. Of course, I always carry a pair of jumpers with me. And I don’t ever act as if I’m amused over someone else’s difficulty.
Sister Sans L’Humour did her job well.
• • •
There’s a shocking amount of language inflation in this age when we haven’t yet recovered from teen-speak, Valley Girl Talk, Bureaucratic-ese and Text-ese
Let me explain:
You may have already read my rant about how the word “like” has become the most common non-word in conversation.
Like even people close to me, like grandchildren, when they’re telling about something they did or said, pepper their speech with, “And I’m like golly, and she’s like really?”
“Like has taken the place of “said.” Instead of “I said, ‘you’re looking good,’” we hear, “And I’m like ‘you’re looking good.’” I suspect that once upon a time, someone overused “like” in locutions like, “I said something like ‘Golly, you’re smart.” In time, “something like” became just “like,” and the problem grew.
It’s disturbing to hear grownups now speaking that way. If, according to the rules, adults teach children, something’s wrong here.
People don’t use “like” much when writing. A few months ago there was a host of activities ranging from an AAUW convention to an ambitious tree-planting day at Lincoln Park, to a massive Gallinas River cleanup.
At one of the events, I listened in as a parent apparently told of her exchange with her teenager. In every instance, the mom used “like” instead of “said,” like this: “My son’s like, ‘Why can’t I like borrow the car?’ and I’m like, ‘Because I like said so.’”
I wondered whether her “like”-ness applied only to what her son had spoken. I soon discovered that, like, that was the way she — the mom — spoke anyway.
The conclusion is inescapable: Obviously, she picked up her son’s mannerisms and is spreading them to others. Will the perfectly acceptable “I said” fade into oblivion?
Let’s like hope not.
• • •
In last week’s column, I lamented that what I fear is the inevitable death of cursive writing. Anyone who’s been inside an elementary school, ever, recalls the enlarged cursive alphabet posters surrounding the walls of each classroom.
I have no doubt that soon the last vestiges of cursive writing will show up in the personal signature people will occasionally need to provide. Teaching well into this century, after having formally retired from full-time teaching, I was amazed to see such a dismaying lack of cursive writing in students’ assignments. Most of them printed, a much slower process.
And now, with keyboards and pads that we tap, we don’t practice handwriting much.
Richard Lindeborg, a frequent contributor to this column, might have come across a way to allay my fears about the dismal future of cursive. He writes:
“How about this: Since writing cursive has clearly became optional for communication, we could teach it in art classes and workshops much like we now teach calligraphy.
“Since reading cursive is still a communications skill (for a few decades people will encounter documents written in cursive, either by the ‘older generation’ in present time or stashed away in business or personal files still needed for reference.),” Lindeborg added, “We could continue for a while to teach reading cursive in the reading/language curriculum.”