English is a funny language

yet no one laughs. Ok, maybe some people do. One thing that irks me about it is if a word is mispronounced or misused long enough, it will change to make the wrong way correct. I think this promotes sloppiness. An example that comes to mind is 'forte'. The most common usage of the word means 'strength'. If your good at something, it's your forte. Forte used this way is pronounced 'fort' not 'fortay' which is an Italian musical term. Forte as most people use it, is French. Very few people pronounce it correctly. The last person I heard do so was Howie Long, an analyst foe Fox Sports. A lot of dictionaries will show the 'fortay' version since it's so commonly mispronounced they gave in so everyone doesn't look stupid.

Here's a goofy one. If you can you can keep something secret, do it without people knowing, you're discrete. If you try to sneak around and get caught, you're indiscrete. If you have a brain tumor that surgeons can safely remove, it's operable. If they can't safely remove it, it's inoperable. By the same token, if something catches fire easily, it's flammable. On the other hand, if it's inflammable, it can be easily set on fire...er..hey, wait a minute, are you nuts? 'In' is used to designate the opposite so whose idea was it to make flammable and inflammable mean the same thing? Is it any wonder people that move here from other countries have so much trouble learning English?

Then we have things like idioms, figures of speech, and the like. I'm a big fan of NCIS and there's a character from Israel, a Mossad agent, named Ziva who's always trying to fit in by using them, but always messes them up a bit which points out how silly most of them are in the first place. Things we say like 'there's more than one way to skin a cat'. Our poor foreign friend is still having trouble with flammable and inflammable and now they have to study the different methods of feline skinning and why the hell that's applicable to finding different routes to drive to work. It's raining cats and dogs, great, how am I going to explain those dents in my car to Geico? Let me give you a piece of my mind. Please, from listening to you the last few minutes, you've all ready given out way too much as it is. A lot of them don't make any sense and it's just by memorization that you understand what they mean. In most cases you really can't derive the meaning of them. Our speech is very colorful but it just makes it that much harder to learn.

Here's a little unrelated thing that isn't worth a separate entry (yeah, like this whole thing was, I know). Is there a convention for how long someone who's died is referred to as the late? Some presidents seem to keep 'the late' attached to their name for years. JFK maybe decades. I mean how long can someone be considered late before accepting the fact that they're just not ever going to show up.

Celiac rant #1

There is a rare disease called celiac sprue which kicked in for me in my early 30's. What is it? It's an intolerence to gluten. Gluten? A gluey substance found in grains such as wheat, oats, barley, and rye. There's no pill or cure. It's a matter of not eating these foods or anything made from these foods or anything with cross-contamination from these foods. Unlike a diabetic who can eat sugar but must monitor the amount, a celiac can NEVER eat gluten. If you want to know more about this disease look it up. The point is that my diet is different than others (not to mention complicated).

Before the spur reared its ugly head I could eat anything like most others can. I also knew most of the basics of the foods I ate. Bread was made from flour and flour from wheat. Sugar is a cane, potatoes are a tuber, and cheese comes from milk-milk from cows.

Since I've had this disease I have discovered just how ignorant people are about the foods they eat. Typically when someone learns that I have to eat certain foods, they ask too many questions...this usually occurs when I'm trying to eat. "Shut up! I'm hungery!!!!" If this isn't bad enough they say the most stupid things. Like "oh, so you can't eat sugar?" Since when did sugar become a grain you idiot. Another one I've heard is "so you can eat white bread" WHAT??? Is your mother also your sister??? And yet another "so you can eat cake". I asked this person what they thought cake was made of and they replied that they didn't know. One other was a comment that I couldn't eat potatoes.

These are basics. I of course now know all kinds of ingredients. This is mandatory for me. I wouldn't expect everyone to know that some fruit drinks have wheat in them but I would expect that they know that oranges are a fruit and grow on trees.

Listen up people first...know what the hell you're eating....second...if someone has a rare disease and they are not a loved one, leave them alone. We are not freaks in a carnival!

Where's the awe...or shock for that matter?

I do realize that most of us develop some level of cynicism as we age. Mine seems to be at a greater level than most others. Nothing that humans do seems to inspire awe in me. I'll use a classic example...a 120lb mommy lifts a burning car off her child and saves it's life. This does not inspire awe, however it does reassure me that there is still a small percentage of humans that are not souly motivated by self gain. She's not the incredible Hulk or a fucking angel. Her primal instincts kicked in along with her adrenaline. Kudos to mommy for her unselfish love.

On the other side of the coin...nothing humans do inspires shock or surprise in me. Of course if my BFF became a serial killer this would surprise me because it is not their nature. Since I have already used a mommy example, I'll use another. Mommy blames PPD for microwaving her baby. Am I shocked..no. I am pissed off...yes. I have experienced very black depressions and extreme anxiety. I don't kill because of it. Besides if she was having black thoughts about motherhood she should have gone to the doctor. Sterilize her, lock her up, and throw away the key.

I watch others in my age group react to these types of happenings with awe and shock. Some seem like their acting on purpose but others are truely surprised! This evokes a bit of jealousy in me...how I long to for a touch of naiveness....

hose flavored Gatorade (a rerun)

Sounds pretty ridicules, doesn't it? I'm in my 50's and was raised just outside of Milwaukee (literally within 5 blocks). We'd run around outside in the summer, be hot, sweaty and dehydrated and we didn't have Gatorade and seldom would bother to go inside for a drink. Instead we turned on the nearest hose, let it run for a minute, then drank from it. We drank long and deep and nothing was so refreshing as that slightly funny tasting water from a hose. It had the extra benefit of easily dousing our face and head, cooling us off so we could run back out and get hot and sweaty all over again. Most of us probaly drank out of a hose when we were young and never worried about it not being purified, fortified, or avertised.

Sometimes I miss those simpler times.

Re-friendship

The word re-friendship (ok, maybe it isn’t a word but it should be) came up the other day when I was talking to a friend from High School I hadn’t heard from in over 30 years. We hadn’t had any contact with each other in over 30 years so it’s been fun catching up.

This brings up something I think we’ve all experienced. I think everyone at one time or another has run into an old friend they haven’t seen in years, and I mean a real friend, not just an acquaintance, and then after talking for a few minutes it’s as if there was no time has passed at all. It’s as if you saw them just a few days ago, not 10 years. You fall back into the same comfort level you previously shared with them. This is one of the best feelings I’ve ever come across. It’s one I’m experiencing now.

One of my very best friends, a BFF if ever there was one, whom I love and have loved dearly for years, was missing from my life for over a decade. This was mostly due to a temporary change in lifestyle, then moving and just losing touch. Also because of some things that were gong on in our lives, our last few times together weren’t as friendly as in the past so our parting wasn’t on the best of terms. We both were feeling badly over some things we had said and done. This friend has never been out of my thoughts for any length of time. I’d wonder what was going on in their life, if they were happy, healthy, if they were with anyone and where they were. We used to talk all the time, nothing was off limits, hang out doing the most mundane of things but enjoying being around each other while doing them. After all these years, there was a bit of a hole in my life and I finally decided to try and take some steps to find them. I dug up the parents’ phone number but was kind of nervous about calling. You know how the longer you put off getting a hold of someone the harder it can be to do it. You start feeling like they’ll think you’re crazy calling them out of the blue or won’t remember you or worse yet, just plain not want to talk to you. After a week or two I finally worked up the courage to call. Of course the conversation went great and I asked them to pass on my contact information which the said they would do on the upcoming weekend. I still was nervous as to whether I’d get a call and how it would go. The next day my phone rang and it was my friend. I was so excited. After a bit things got more relaxed and soon after things were back to normal. I was so relieved to have my friend back. I wasn’t the only one, another mutual friend had been waiting just as long to get hooked back up and that’s been done too.

Is there a point to all this? I suppose it’s first a good friendship should be cherished and not let to drift. I mean how many people are you truly close to? Ones you can share anything with no matter what and not worry about driving them away even if they don’t like what you say. Who can tell you just how they feel, be brutally honest, and not hurt your feelings or anger you. And you can to do the same back at them. Not very many I don’t imagine. As a matter of fact, you’re lucky to find one like that much less several.
So, if you’ve drifted apart from someone like that and still think about them years later, it’s definitely worth the effort to at least try to re-friend them. If they ignore your email or say nice to talk to you but...it’s you’re no worse than before. But…if they respond positively and you start back up where you left off, you gained something of measureless value that will enrich your life immensely. I have been so blessed and I’d like for you to be as well. So grab an old phone number, get on Myspace or Facebook and do a search. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.