STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES BUT WORDS CAN NEVER HURT ME. It was a silly childhood chant. When we grow up, we stop calling people names. Or do we? Hurtful names have crept into our everyday language and are so common that people don’t notice, except those people who are affected. Call me over-sensitive, but as someone who has a physical disability, I’m offended when I hear a stupid act referred to as “lame.” My friend has a similar reaction when that same act is called “gay.” And the person doing the act? He’s “so retarded.” An unexplainable or seemingly strange action is “schtzy,” “psycho,” or “manic depressive.” We talk about the poor as “less fortunate” or “them,” somehow different from—and not as good as—us, and we call others “illegals,” stripping them of flesh and blood, who are “invading” us, so we should stop our policy of “catch and release” (as though they’re fish, not people. If we think before we speak, we can shred the sticks and crumble the stones that so often bruise us and return the dignity of humanity to others and ourselves.
Tag Archive for childhood
Lost from our Childhood (For Fun)
If you’re 60+ this will bring back memories. If you’re younger, it should give you a chuckle. If you’re a teenager, it will give you ammunition next time an adult tries to tell you that you should speak English, like they grew up doing. [Thanks to Linda Younts for sending me this, which I’ve slightly modified. She knows how much I love word-play.]
Lost Words From Our Childhood, words gone as fast as the buggy whip!
- Mergatroyd! as in Heavens to Mergatroyd!
- Jalopy…as in I drove a jalopy when I was young.
- Hunky Dory…as in I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle
Then there are those expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology:
- Don’t touch that dial
- Carbon copy
- You sound like a broken record
- [He was] hung out to dry
And how we’d describe people and actions:
- [He has] a lot of moxie
- [We’d put on our best] bib and tucker [to] straighten up and fly right
- [We accused people of being] a knucklehead [or] a nincompoop, [or] a pill
- [He’s] in like Flynn [and] living the life of Riley
- [I wouldn’t do that]–not for all the tea in China!
- We’d see signs (and write graffiti saying “Kilroy was here”
Or all those expressions now replaced by “the ‘F’ word”:
- Heavens to Betsy!
- Gee whillikers!
- Jumping Jehoshaphat!
- Holy moley!
We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” or “This is a “fine kettle of fish!’” we discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed as omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.
My comment: I wouldn’t mind going back to an era when we had a whole bunch of expressions rather than a few socially questionable ones that try to cover all situations–and fail.
Sticks, Stones, and Words
Sticks and Stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me. Remember that childhood chant? How true is it? According to Roger Zelazny in today’s Thursday Thought quote, it’s words, not what may have actually been meant by them, that stick in our minds. Good reason to think before we speak.
“No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.” — Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light