13 April 2010
Words
Having various friends of various ilks with various interests, it's tough to keep the vernacular in line.
Friends know that I love horse racing, others know that I love baseball, my family knows about my of love politics, and most everyone knows the fact that I am absolutely enamored with the art and science of shoeing a horse. But few know about my passion for words. Though I can't spell worth a damn, I love words and vernacular. But it causes problems from time to time.
Tonight I was asked by my Facebook and actual friend, and soon to be De-facto sister-in-law Jeniffer, what "hand ridden" meant. This isn't the first time that's happened. My Uncle and name sake told me a while ago that he enjoyed my facebook posts even though he didn't know what some of them meant. To help remedy this, I split my facebook, one page for farrier friends and another for personal friends, family and other relations that actually knew me. It worked but only to a point.
Part of the problem I have encountered with life is this desire to be correct in the vernacular of whatever I have been interested in. I ask people what the correct term for this or that is, or if I hear a word or term in conversation that I don't understand, I ask what it means. "Spun" for example is a term used in three day eventing and combined driving that means a horse was rejected at the soundness check. Dammit did it again. To understand that you needed to understand that at certain points ( I think there are two) of a three day or combined driving events there are veterinarian inspections of horses for soundness. Shit, that's twice. Soundness means that a horse isn't lame. Rat's it happened again, this is tougher than I thought. Well, I need to stop at some point, so let's talk about something else.
Like I said if it interests me I want to know the words, but if it doesn't than I don't care so much. Tech talk is a good example. To this day I haven't the faintest idea what a router in the tech world is, but I do know what it is in a wood shop setting. I got my head wrapped around what spam was other than compressed lunch meat but that was because I once had a hotmail account. Password is more than a game show, plug and play is what I have to buy when I go to Best Buy. Beyond all that I could care less.
I look at my son, if you have met him you know that words are strictly to be used to accomplish whatever he feels he needs. He doesn't seem to have the curiosity about words that I have. Further, neither does Alexis the wonder apprentice. Conversations with her became difficult from time to time, so now I carry a dictionary and a thesaurus in the truck . It seems that the young people of today don't have the need to learn words like I did as a child and I blame the networks for no longer playing Warner Brother's cartoons on Saturday mornings. Think about it, those were made in the 40's and 50's as added entertainment for movie goers. Who were the movie goers in those days? Adults.
When we were young Price or I would hear a word in a cartoon and we would ask mom, grandma, or grandpa what they meant. We were quickly directed to a well worn Webster's dictionary. Soon enough we quit asking and just went over and got out the dictionary and I think that was what set the hook. Oh geez, set the hook means...............
Friends know that I love horse racing, others know that I love baseball, my family knows about my of love politics, and most everyone knows the fact that I am absolutely enamored with the art and science of shoeing a horse. But few know about my passion for words. Though I can't spell worth a damn, I love words and vernacular. But it causes problems from time to time.
Tonight I was asked by my Facebook and actual friend, and soon to be De-facto sister-in-law Jeniffer, what "hand ridden" meant. This isn't the first time that's happened. My Uncle and name sake told me a while ago that he enjoyed my facebook posts even though he didn't know what some of them meant. To help remedy this, I split my facebook, one page for farrier friends and another for personal friends, family and other relations that actually knew me. It worked but only to a point.
Part of the problem I have encountered with life is this desire to be correct in the vernacular of whatever I have been interested in. I ask people what the correct term for this or that is, or if I hear a word or term in conversation that I don't understand, I ask what it means. "Spun" for example is a term used in three day eventing and combined driving that means a horse was rejected at the soundness check. Dammit did it again. To understand that you needed to understand that at certain points ( I think there are two) of a three day or combined driving events there are veterinarian inspections of horses for soundness. Shit, that's twice. Soundness means that a horse isn't lame. Rat's it happened again, this is tougher than I thought. Well, I need to stop at some point, so let's talk about something else.
Like I said if it interests me I want to know the words, but if it doesn't than I don't care so much. Tech talk is a good example. To this day I haven't the faintest idea what a router in the tech world is, but I do know what it is in a wood shop setting. I got my head wrapped around what spam was other than compressed lunch meat but that was because I once had a hotmail account. Password is more than a game show, plug and play is what I have to buy when I go to Best Buy. Beyond all that I could care less.
I look at my son, if you have met him you know that words are strictly to be used to accomplish whatever he feels he needs. He doesn't seem to have the curiosity about words that I have. Further, neither does Alexis the wonder apprentice. Conversations with her became difficult from time to time, so now I carry a dictionary and a thesaurus in the truck . It seems that the young people of today don't have the need to learn words like I did as a child and I blame the networks for no longer playing Warner Brother's cartoons on Saturday mornings. Think about it, those were made in the 40's and 50's as added entertainment for movie goers. Who were the movie goers in those days? Adults.
When we were young Price or I would hear a word in a cartoon and we would ask mom, grandma, or grandpa what they meant. We were quickly directed to a well worn Webster's dictionary. Soon enough we quit asking and just went over and got out the dictionary and I think that was what set the hook. Oh geez, set the hook means...............
Labels: words
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