Sticks And Stones

We all know the phrase that my title tonight gets its name from, you know the old wives tale "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" it's a really well known phrase like; "It's raining cats and dogs" or "Come on mate, it was one time, with your wife, it didn’t mean anything, I mean sure she’s pregnant and its not yours... wow actually that must suck for you, well I’m off to screw your sister hem bye!". But also like the other 2 sayings it’s all complete and utter bovine faeces. I mean can you imagine it raining cats and dogs? if that were to happen then that implies that all water in the world is household pets and would mean that everyone, and not just David Blunkett, would have to shower with a Labrador (well how else is he going to find the soap?). It’s a preposterous idea.
The harsh, hallowing truth is, words are mans biggest weapons, well apart from nukes, or Chuck Norris. Entire nations can be seduced by a well constructed sentence, entire wars have been caused by one mans vocabulary, or lack of in one particular, recent, weapon of mass destruction searching example.
But anyway I have a bone to pick with that phrase, is it not true that you are taught it from a young age, to try and “thicken your skin” so to speak, so that when you get older and people begin to insult you about everything you do, say or are, you’re not as badly affected? If it is so efficient then why when you make a small girl cry, and she goes running to the playground assistant and you run up chanting “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” you get shouted at and told “this is no excuse for a seventeen year old, now please leave the school before we phone the police.” And barred from the local primary school?
There are two reasons for this; one, parents are liars and will tell you anything to stop you complaining about your brother saying that your head is weird and two, words really do hurt, and when used correctly (or incorrectly) they can make a bad situation worse.

Ok, not strictly an example of making a bad situation worse, but more of a bad situation a bit more confusing. You may have remembered a few weeks ago, I had to attend a funeral, well, this was my first funeral and as we approached the grieving partner he asked me “Is this your first funeral then Joe?” and before I could solemnly nod my head my mum butted in and says “Yes it is. UNFORTUNATLY”
Ill gives you a moment to think about that... what in the world possessed my mother to add that bit on the end? What’s unfortunate; that I’m 17, and it’s only now I have to face a coffin? Because I’d say that was pretty good, in fact I would say I’m somewhat of a LUCKY person. Or is it unfortunate that this funeral is my first one, because that sounds a bit undermining and is not really the best thing to say to someone about to say goodbye to their loved one “well, I understand that you’ve lost your soul mate but you could have put some effort in, I mean really, think of my son, this is his first experience of admitting to the fragility of life and this place is a dump!” needless to say with all this running through my mind, I had no time to be sad, I was too busy being confused.

Ok, so I’ve explained how peoples choice of words can be idiotic and sometimes life threatening (“I read sharks don’t like meat, apparently they prefer tofu”)
But words are brilliant, they can be picked out of sentences to get the real meaning, one word can change the entire perceived denotation of a sentence. Like when someone starts a sentence with “Ok, Hypothetically...” this can be translated as “Ok the situation I am about to ask you about has just happened, it’s bad and I have just done it, I’m asking for your advice so that I can part some of the blame on you and feign ignorance” or when someone shouts out at a party “TUNE”, this can be translated as “I’m a complete moron and shouldn’t be allowed to breed”

One word use which I never understood, is when people tag “actually” onto the end of a phrase, such as saying to a Italian chef; “yeah, that bolognaise was quite nice actually” or saying to The Who (pre deaths); “Well actually that concert wasn’t bad”, or to a hesitating murderer; “actually I’d prefer not dying tonight, I have dinner with the girlfriends parents”. It’s admitting that before the event you had apprehensions about the quality of it, or doubted the person in question, whereas in reality, you wouldn’t have doubts about a top chef cooking a kickass bolognaise and chances are you do quite like living. I don’t know if you have any experience with the word “actually” but to me it was introduced by my family, mainly my mother. I don’t know why, perhaps things were just more surprising back then.

But my favourite use of language is something even I’m regularly guilty of. It’s what I call “delusions of self importance” It may sound like a complete knock off of “delusions of grandeur” and that’s because, well it is. Basically it’s a term I invented (I hope) that is to be used when someone uses a word that isn’t needed in a sentence, when another, more regular, down to earth word is more appropriate, like whenever I don’t want to sound like a “blogger” and say this is an “article”, it is really not an article, but by saying that, not only are people more impressed, but it makes ME feel better, and also makes other people feel inadequate, “Oh man, I wish I wrote articles.” You can hear them thinking. But it’s also used by the wider world, when they say something which makes them seem more important, if you’re observant you’ll realise he is only helping himself, not anyone else and probably feeding an oversized ego. Like I said, I’m very guilty of this. Though I would like to quickly add that this isn’t the same as when someone uses a higher register word, because chances are they are just better educated, or a pretentious tool.

Joe Strange

Gets to tick his chart today because he used “grandeur” in a sentence.