Changing Our Conversation

I remember back when I was growing up there was a diet “candy” on the market called Ayds (pronounced AIDS).  By the time AIDS (HIV/AIDS) became part of our vocabulary, the diet pill lost 50% of its market and finally opted to CHANGE its NAME!

Often it takes a hit to our financial well being, before we are willing to clean up our act.  So, when October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month and Ms. Ann Coulter tweets “I highly approve of Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard,” after the Presidential Debate last night (10/22/12).  It may only be if and when she recognizes that statements like that impact her income … that she may consider getting a thesaurus or playground-bully handbook, and find an alternate term.

Sometimes we have to give up words or phrases no matter how common they once were, no matter how innocent they may have seemed.  Even IF Grandpa Jerry could tell the cab driver “that’s mighty white of you” back in the day, that doesn’t mean we can still use that term in modern times.  There’s a difference between “colored people” as Grandma Pauline use to reference and the politically acceptable “people of color” which of course is a wide sweeping term that should remind us as “white folks” we are seriously in the minority and had better clean up our act.

I realize of course, that I grew up with a sailor’s mouth.  Which in retrospect is probably a derogatory term for those who serve our country.  So I’ll consider rephrasing that to “gutter” mouth.  Look!  A “teachable moment”.  I can’t say that I ever heard my father curse when I was a kid, so I certainly didn’t get that from Dad, and while Mom was quick on her DNA baby daddy analysis (i.e. bastard) quips, my salty language didn’t come from her either.  I actually blame George Carlin, who was my idol and his seven words you can’t say on TV.  Those seemed to be my bread and butter as I scan volumes of my journals from the mid-seventies.  But somehow before I landed a job heading up the technology department at a libral arts college for women, I learned how to curb my enthusiasm and clean up my act.  Though admittedly I do have a lapse of conscientiousness from time to time and  I find myself tripping over my mea culpa.

There are also those unavoidable better judgment calls.  Take for instance this Free graphic package I use on my computer called:  GNU Image Manipulation Program or GIMP for short.  It really is a wonderful program, but as my best friend in college was limbless, I know firsthand how words can carry unintended payloads.  And I am quite certain she would, as I do, find the acronym offensive.

We all have verbal skeletons in our closet that may have been part of our culture or colloquialisms, that we should consider leaving behind in the 21st Century.  We may not even realize a word is painful to our friends cellular cochlea because we don’t know that their son is black, mother is schizophrenic, or sister is challenged.  But if we are to ever recognize that we live within an international community and that our words do indeed trigger ripples in our global pond, we should at least listen to ourselves and consider for a moment if we want to carry forward all of the language baggage we have brought from the past.

Why?  Well, as author Anne Lamont posted today on facebook, “Haven’t people like Coulter ever heard of the word Karma?”