It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting when people consistently use the incorrect word and can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tolerate any correction, even when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s offered politely.<\/p>\n
Let me explain:<\/p>\n
A friend with whom I once took classes at Highlands had been hobbling around on crutches a couple of weeks ago. I saw her this week, sans crutches and asked how she was doing. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Much better! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just glad I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not ambulatory anymore!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Now w-a-i-t a second. Maria had fractured a bone in March and needed crutches to help her get around. She was able to walk on her own this week. Obviously, at some point her doctor used the term \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ambulatory,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which my friend must have taken to mean \u00e2\u20ac\u0153laid-up,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unable to walk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gettable aroundable only with a wheelchair.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just the opposite! I hope to remain ambulatory the rest of my life. Apparently, the sense of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ambulance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d entered her mind and she pictured herself being wheeled around on a gurney.<\/p>\n
And so for that occasion, with Maria in mind, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve composed a short essay which purposely mixes correct with substituted terms. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s see how many of these terms our readers can find. An email to my work or home address (shown below) with the list of errors would be great.<\/p>\n
Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the essay:<\/p>\n
My neighbor looked at me akimbo. I believe he thinks it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a doggy-dog world. I feared he was going to get fiscal with me, judging by his expression. For all intensive purposes, he really seemed angry. Irregardless, to my upmost ability, I tried to apiece him, but his tact was simply to glare at me.<\/p>\n
He seemed to have cared less how I felt. How would I be able to device a way to cheer him up? I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t illicit any information from him.<\/p>\n
Fiscal violence has never been my bivouac. I feared his militias stare as he stood there moot. Well, as it turns out, he was enable to udder any words because he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d swallowed a hot dog which lodged in his throat. He went into a fatal position. That became my opportunity to administer the Heineken remover on him.<\/p>\n
It worked. He recovered and literally flew out of the room. My efforts had not been in vein. Otherwise, he might have remained laying on the floor, prostate.<\/p>\n
Well, a long time ago, as a matter of principal, I took a first-aid course, and although I felt much less than competent in that area, I believe I learned some aspects of first aid that were commiserate with my abilities. Somehow, I got threw the course. This is not an attempt to flout my knowledge of first aid, but merely to provide true facts.<\/p>\n
And I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t except any complements.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
A post on my Facebook page bears two panels, contrasting yesteryear with today. The top image shows dozens of kids in a park, tossing balls, skipping rope, wrestling, riding bikes, and in short, engaging in strenuous activities.<\/p>\n
The lower image \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d several years later \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d shows kids in the same park, the same time of year, but the only sound emitting from that playground is the tic-tic-tic of cell phones, each kid either playing some weird video game or chatting with a friend.<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s become so-oo common. Once, at Charlie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Restaurant, I saw a family of four \u00e2\u20ac\u201d obviously, Mom, Dad, Sissie and Junior \u00e2\u20ac\u201d all pecking away at their phones. It would have been easy for someone to interrupt their daily bread consumption and suggest, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all of you put your phones away and talk directly to each other?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Well, that would have been a bad assumption, as the four probably were chatting with others, not in their family \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or else playing Angry Birds or some other video game.<\/p>\n
This morning, as I was driving west on Mills, I espied a petite young lady crowding me with her huge Duallie truck.<\/p>\n
If I sped up, she did too, and I wondered about her game. Of course, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a good idea for the driver in the leading vehicle to keep looking back at the pursuer, but when I did, I saw the familiar tic-tic of her iPhone. She was just then hanging up and took time to make another call \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or play another game.<\/p>\n
But what I sensed \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and this part is scary \u00e2\u20ac\u201d was that she wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even paying attention to traffic: She gauged my car\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s movements and used her peripheral vision to tell her when to move.<\/p>\n
Can any chat be that important?<\/p>\n
Amazing that cell phones have been around as long as my trailing driver has. And though there are painful statistics on how many fatalities have involved a distracted driver chatting on a cell phone, almost nothing has been done to prevent such carelessness. It would be great to have a device that disables a car when a cellphone is in use.<\/p>\n
When I mentioned that same point to my wife, Bonnie, she insisted that there may never be such technology. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And besides, what about if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the passenger, not the driver, who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on the phone?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She had a point, but I still worry. And yet, I applaud people who pull all the way off the road to receive or make calls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting when people consistently use the incorrect word and can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tolerate any correction, even when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s offered politely. Let me explain: A friend with whom I once took classes at Highlands had been hobbling around on crutches a couple of weeks ago. I saw her this week, sans crutches and asked how she was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1374,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373\/revisions\/1374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}