Some people said I was trying too hard to win the girl. Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parents, who encouraged the match, told me they approved of the way I would send them a thank-you note each time they invited me to spend the weekend at their house.<\/p>\n
What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unusual about a thank-you note? Not much \u00e2\u20ac\u201d unless it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mailed from the town of the hosts before I even left town. Back in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s, here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what happened often:<\/p>\n
Carol lived in a resort area called Lake in the Hills, a suburb of Algonquin, Ill. I lived in a then-small town called Naperville, about 40 miles away. But those 40 miles are not quite like the distance from here to Wagon Mound. At the time, there were probably 40 Chicago suburbs along my path, with the requisite 1,400 traffic lights to navigate.<\/p>\n
The cards I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d send usually arrived at Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s folks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 house the day after I mailed them (once, because I was delayed in Algonquin, the card arrived the same day.) Friends I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve discussed this with often laughed at me for two reasons. Some thought it was unnecessary to mail the cards the day I left; others questioned my mailing anything at all. So eager to win Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heart was I that (only) once I mailed the thank-you card before I even arrived at the Kucias\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 house.<\/p>\n
I send postcards to friends each time my family travels, usually to Denmark, to visit our oldest son and his family. But yet, to many I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve spoken to, the habit of mailing anything across the Atlantic, or across town, is old-fashioned, a waste of time, redundant. Is the thank-you-for-your-hospitality habit going the way of the cards that don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t arrive in response to graduation gifts of a $20 or $50?<\/p>\n
Weekend visits \u00e2\u20ac\u201d properly supervised \u00e2\u20ac\u201d became common. Carol saved a ton of the cards to give me, along with the Dear John, some time later.<\/p>\n
Does anyone write letters or send cards anymore? I feel as if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve won the lottery when I receive a letter that appears to be addressed by hand, among dozens of solicitations for credit cards, insurance, magazines and sweepstakes literature. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve discovered that there are convincing type fonts that resemble actual handwriting, and those get moved to the top of the pile.<\/p>\n
Discussing the ill-conceived offspring of post cards and letters \u00e2\u20ac\u201d texting \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I continue to despair over the deterioration of the language in that so many texters feel compelled to shorten normal words and phrases. One of the organizations that submits items for the Optic\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s La Gente page uses @ in place of what it represents: at. And I wonder: How much effort we save by this technique? You realize, dear correspondent, that both constructions require two keystrokes.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a regular Facebook participant who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s seen numerous butcherings of English. And with that come formerly forbidden words such as the f-word. It is for effect? For shock value? As a way of saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to go by the rules\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? The anonymity of the Internet is such that people often feel a sense of bravado.<\/p>\n
For example, back in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc50s, when I was a member of the National Guard, I was one of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153communications\u00e2\u20ac\u009d personnel of the unit, which meant I spent a lot of time on the phone during summer camp.<\/p>\n
We were all hooked up to some 40 other phones, linking our unit with dozens of others. All of us could hear all the others, and it often became a Tower of Babel. Some wise guy got the idea of uttering his favorite word, the f-word into his phone, expecting his contribution to remain anonymous. He did it several times, obviously enjoying this highly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mature\u00e2\u20ac\u009d action.<\/p>\n
When the commanding officer heard about the offender, he lined up all of us, interrogating us one at a time. All except one of us passed the questioning, but not until we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d stood for an hour in the blazing El Paso-Fort Bliss sun.<\/p>\n
The f-worder soldier\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s identity soon came clear, as several fellow Guardsmen had seen the man becoming more and more animated as he rained the profanity upon us.<\/p>\n
I believe the protocol for writing \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d and even spoken communication \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d needs to be enhanced. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bothersome to read a truncated text from someone I once thought was literate but whose style of texting creates much doubt. What do today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s English teachers do to encourage clarity? And I re-emphasize that most of us who attended Immaculate Conception School and took classes under Sister Mary Siempre Correctamente managed to survive college classes.<\/p>\n
Finally, the English language isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t something of interest solely to teachers of this subject. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s refreshing to encounter teachers of others subjects who are able and willing to correct others\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 grammar.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m seldom moved as much as when I read a recent Facebook post from Diana Presser, who reflects my sentiments exactly and perhaps expresses them more eloquently than I could. This is what Diana wrote:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve abstained from posting recently due to the horrific series of events.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153When people get shot in the face for being black, it makes me ashamed of being part of the white race. When a dentist with too much time and money on his hands beheads an old lion \u00e2\u20ac\u201d on a wildlife refuge \u00e2\u20ac\u201d for a trophy, it makes me ashamed of being a member of the human race.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I consider myself a member of the humane race, and wish people would learn that all life matters.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some people said I was trying too hard to win the girl. Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parents, who encouraged the match, told me they approved of the way I would send them a thank-you note each time they invited me to spend the weekend at their house. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unusual about a thank-you note? Not much \u00e2\u20ac\u201d unless it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s […]<\/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\/1401"}],"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=1401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1402,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions\/1402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}