Tag Archives: rants

Keep it off the highways

This morning, as my husband and I were on a nice drive through the country, a car started to tailgate us. My husband commented that they needed to back off, and we were frustrated at how they were driving. It’s not like we could do anything on a two lane road with a car in front of us, but still the girl stayed right on our back bumper.

We turned; she turned. We stopped at a stop sign, then went when it was clear. She, however, cruised right through it behind us. We finally opened up to a four-lane and were glad she’d be passing. She didn’t get in any hurry to pass, though. We were slowing down to enter a parking lot when she finally cruised past.

That was when I saw it. Right there in the middle of her back window. A Longhorn sticker.

I have a Former Student sticker for Texas A&M on my back window.

*sigh*

This is not the first time I’ve had a Longhorn tailgate me (which is amusing considering that I’ve never been known to be “slow.”) I’ve had a Longhorn heckle me in bumper to bumper traffic through an open window. When in college, I even had someone try to run me off the road, flashing a horns symbol at me as I tried not to go into the ditch and hit a road sign.

At the heart of it all, these events scare me even more than they anger me.

Seriously, I am the first to say Texas is a good school. I respect the school and the education people get there. The rivalry, for me, generally exists on the field. And as I said in a previous entry, I’ve always viewed that particular rivalry as one that has an undertone of respect (unlike other rivalries).

Sadly, you do have those on both sides that fail to remember that, and therein lies my fear. Its to those people, I plead… no matter what, keep it off the highway. A school rivalry is NOT worth someone’s life — be it you, your rival or an innocent bystander. We all put stickers on our vehicles to personalize them, to show allegiance to our schools, organizations, businesses, politics, etc. They are not there to be used as a target. Don’t tailgate, heckle, cut-off, or try to sideswipe someone because of their school allegiance. That’s dangerous and has potential consequences that are bigger than any rivalry.

So to the young woman who chose to tailgate us on the way home… grow up. We’re not even in Texas. We’re not playing today. I have nothing against you personally. I actually respect your school (just not the actions of people like, well, you.) And, at the end of it all, my vehicle is over twice as big as yours. If you had rear ended us in a sudden stop situation, I would have gotten out of my truck and run over to see if you were okay.

Then (assuming you were) I’d slap you upside the head for hurting my truck. Because, really, that would piss me off. A lot. A lot more than any rivalry. Because seriously… this crap does not belong on the highway. Leave it on the football field. ‘Kay?

Kay.

Thanks.

The dumbing down of the English language

I was maybe around 10 years old when I was first presented with the following “riddle:”

C D E D B D ducks?
M R not ducks!
O S A R!
C D E D B D wings?
Y I B! M R ducks!

For anyone as confused as I was, the conversation above says:  “See the itty-bitty ducks?” “Them are not ducks!” “Oh yes they are! See the itty-bitty wings?”  “Why, I be! Them are ducks!”

In this day and age, more and more I feel like I did when I was first presented with that riddle. I get text messages or I see Facebook status updates that will take me ten minutes to decipher, because they are filled with short hand.  When I was younger, this type of spelling appeared only in the comic pages or perhaps as a bonus question on a test.

4ward. gr8. u2. 2morrow. 2day.

I have actually reached a point of frustration in which I will ignore some text messages that use too much shorthand. Text me when you remember how to spell correctly.

I know that part of the problem is lack of space to say all you want to say. Twitter limits you to 140 characters. Text messages (generally) limit you to 160 characters. When your message is too long, I recognize the need to fudge words here and there. But when I get a message that says, “R U there?” I get filled with a deep annoyance. Spell out the words. Don’t make me say it out loud to understand what you are trying to say. In the time it takes me to translate the text, I could have responded twice.

I found a wonderful blog post entitled “The decline and corruption of the English language” on Helium.com.

Today, the world’s literacy seems to be taking reverse leaps. Where children were once trained to appreciate language and the diversity of syntax, grammar, consistency and clarity, today’s youth see the push toward speed and stylized text.

Not only have we moved away from standing true to the language and grammatical rules we were taught growing up, many of our youth no longer learn to neatly and clearly write their own names. Where I learned “keyboarding” as a freshman in high school (though I did have some classes in it as early as fifth grade), most children learn typing techniques as early as kindergarten and first grade.

I have at times said that computers and the internet are the most wonderful and the most horrible things to ever happen to our world. Everything we do, we do at lightening speed. It’s resulted in our doing more work in less time, and its also resulted in our no longer having the need to retain anything we learn. We can find what we want in a moments notice, all with a few clicks of a mouse.

We are all tethered to our computers in one way or another. Unfortunately, instead of it elevating our English language, that fact has dumbed it down. I am sure we are a long way from newspapers and books going to full short hand text (though I have seen greeting cards written in it!). And professors still demand research papers be written properly and edited. But every day, I see our short hand of letters joined with numbers showing up in a new location. Often times, its coming from people I would have never expected to use it. Perhaps its simply become habit. Perhaps its an attempt to “fit in.” Whatever the reason, though, it bothers me.  A lot.

Language is obviously one of the first cultures to suffer, art and music are following in kind, and eventually we’ll return to stick figure cave paintings left for the generations to uncover and scratch their heads over, attempting to discern what happened to the renaissance and the so-called intelligent lives we once led. (From The decline and corruption of the English language)