The Weekly Meat

Pop Quiz: Initialisms*

*These are not acronyms. Please do not call them acronyms. RADAR is an acronym. LASER is an acronym. FUBAR is an acronym. MILF is an acronym.

Alrighty then. Eyes on your own browser. You have 5 minutes to complete.

1. ABA
a) American Bar Association
b) American Booksellers Association
c) American Basketball Association

2. CBA
a) cost-benefit analysis
b) collective bargaining agreement
c) Continental Basketball Association

3. CBC
a) Congressional Black Caucus
b) Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
c) complete blood count

4. CC
a) carbon copy
b) closed circuit
c) Chocolate City

5. CIA
a) Central Intelligence Agency
b) Culinary Institute of America
c) Cleveland Institute of Art

6. DNC
a) Democratic National Committee
b) does not compute
c) dilation and curettage

7. DMC
a) Detroit Medical Center
b) DeLorean Motor Company
c) dynamic mic control

8. EMT
a) emergency medical technician
b) executive management team
c) Elektro-Mess-Technik

9. ERA
a) Equal Rights Amendment
b) Electronic Realty Associates
c) earned run average

10. TMI
a) too much information
b) Thinking Machines, Inc.
 c) Three Mile Island

11. QC
a) quality control
b) Quebec City
c) queer but correct

12. VC
a) venture capital
b) Visual C++
c) Viet Cong

Extra Credit:

HNIC
head negro in charge
Hockey Night in Canada

PDA
personal digital assistant
public display of affection

OK, pencils down! Score your own quiz and report back.

Parents Say the Darndest Things

I've always been a good speller. I took third place in the fifth grade spelling bee, and my abilities, in part, have not only translated into a career in editing, but recently, have served me in good stead at home as well. With young RK now in her fourth year of life, and her vocabulary burgeoning, it has become necessary for my wife, AKL, and me to do more and more spelling out of words.

We use ridiculous euphemisms, shorthand, and spelling in an attempt to code our discussions to a level above RK's already-wise ears. (Just last night, when AKL stumbled onto a cache of mushed raspberries under the table and exclaimed "Jesus!" RK, with flawless timing, added "Christ!") So when it's necessary to talk about things that concern RK in front of her, we do things like refer to her as "the elder" and talk of ice cream as a "cold, dairy-based non-savory comestible" and such.

Normal conversation requires quick, nearly unthinking, spelling, and I seem to have a knack for it. (I knew that college experience in improvisational comedy would come in handy at some point.) But then the methodical editor in me tends to check for errors in the letters that have just escaped my mouth — a review process that occasionally causes me to actually miss AKL's response to whatever is was that we had been talking around. Resulting, of course, in the unpopular husband F-A-I-L.

We know RK will shortly outgrow the spelling and then we'll need new wordplay (even my family's dog learned to spell "W-A-L-K"). Time to dust off the high-school French, or start using military shorthand — wherein words and phrases are shortened to their root letter and then expanded, using the military alphabet, so that "on the move," for instance, becomes "oscar mike" and "what the fuck?" becomes "whiskey tango foxtrot?"

I drop the occasional street-hipster syntax too, because RK and two-year-old E-O don't roll like that yet, and, you know, that's how we 40-year-old honky-ass dads do. And because when discussing the often gargantuan and malodorous results of our young'ns' peristaltic process, yo, let's face it — dropping terms like "P double-O to-the-P" can make dealing with said parenting moments slightly easier to take.

The Island of Misfit Words

I'm an editor. Much of my career centers around words, their usage and meaning. Sometimes, as I've noted in these pages, the current lexicon can be a bit much. Other times, it's sorely inadequate. The following is a list of excellent words I'd hate to see die off. And so I encourage you to use them — properly, often, and in good health. They are culled from my skull, friends, relatives, and the phenomenally entertaining and sadly out of print (though still eminently available) Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words.

ablutions (n.) – the act of bathing. Big around my house, though we never seem to use it in reference to the kids. Rather, it's generally me asking my wife, "Have you finished your ablutions?" By which I mean not only "Have you finished with your shower?" but also, "Have you finished applying all of your girly lotions and potions and salves so that I can get into the bathroom and do manly things such as sit down on the can and do the crossword puzzle while having my constitutional?"

blivit (n.) – The American Heritage Dictionary might define blivit as "something annoying or pointless" or "something difficult or impossible to name" but those in the know have known forever that it's "ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag." See Rove, Karl.

callipygian (adj.) – having shapely buttocks. Excellent word for one of my favorite things. What more to say? "Certainly, it demands more research, but I have it on good authority that Jessica Alba is one of the most callipygian young actresses currently working in Hollywood."

comestibles (n.) – food. Almost always plural. I always think of this being used with brilliant pomposity by John Cleese in the Monty Python "Cheese Shop" sketch — and I always try my best to use it the same way.

constitutional (n.) – (note the small "c" — as in, not having to do with our Constitution) technically, a walk taken for one's health, but I tend more toward the Urban Dictionary's definition. As in, "Kindly extend to others the courtesy of turning on the bathroom fan for your morning constitutional."

cotton to (v.) – to have an affinity for. Generally used in the negative. "I don't cotton to all these folks denying the science of evolution."

dudgeon (n.) – A feeling of offense, resentment, or anger. "When the petulant and erratic John McCain referred to 'That One' in the second debate, it left me in a high dudgeon."

gin up (v.) – to drum up, prop up, fabricate, stimulate. "The Bush administration used this business of 'Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' to gin up their case for invading Iraq."

kerfuffle (n.) – a commotion or brouhaha. A favorite of my wife's, as well as my friend The Gurgling Cod. "There is apparently some giant kerfuffle over on Facebook about breastfeeding pictures."

kibosh (n.) – something that serves as a check or a stop. "For Christmas this year, I was thinking we'd get ourselves a flat-screen TV with the Center Ice hockey package, but my wife put the kibosh on that one faster than you could say 'Jack Robinson'."

paraleipsis (n.) – mentioning something by saying you won't mention it. (i.e., "I won't say I told you so.")

randle (n.) – (definition via Mrs. Byrnes...) "A nonsensical poem recited by Irish schoolboys as an apology for farting at a friend." Let us just appreciate the phenomenal preposition in the definition. "...farting at a friend." Skilled, directional farting aside, I'd also like to point out the name of the protagonist in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest — a nice Irish lad, name o' McMurphy, Randle Patrick.

salve (n.) – a soothing remedy. I mostly just love pronouncing this word with a silent "l" (sav). It sounds so old-timey.

shindig (n.) – party. Anyone who has been to any of my various and sundry shindigs over the years knows how much I love and use this term.

sundry (adj.) – miscellaneous, various. I especially love the redundancy of "various and sundry."

sundries (n.) – miscellaneous small articles, details, or items. "Those Christmas sundries are certainly whimsical, but now they're just collecting dust."

truck (n.) – to have no dealings with. From the French troquer, meaning "to barter." As in, "I've got no truck with any of these damned creationist evangelical governors."

victuals (n.) – food and drink. "Last night, your callipygous young friend cottoned to victuals various and sundry, got ginned up, wound up in a kerfuffle outside the bar, left in a high dudgeon, and proceeded to vomit copiously on her shoes."

Bipartisan Bingo: VP Debate Edition

Be sure to print out your set of VP debate edition bipartisan bingo cards, folks.

The Sarah Palin Dictionary

Sure, it feels a tetch like piling on, when even the righties are calling for her head, but hell, John McCain continues to claim good judgment in these trying times, and so I must continue to dispute his claim. Still, I hope for this to be the last bit of politics on The Meat for a while. Perhaps best now to just sit back and watch while that creaky, titanic old ship tries with increasing despair to avoid the looming iceberg.

The following palincyclopedic primer ought to help us through the VP debate and beyond. And yes, by all means, please contribute additional entries in the Comments field, and I'll append this post as necessary.

Alaska — 1. Giant non-contiguous red state northwest of Canada. 2. Repository for earmarks and big oil money over which Herself lords and Putin's head rears.

also — The first and last word of most Palin sentences also. Excepting, of course, those that end with "You betcha."

doggone it — Studied homespun folksiness with which Herself loves to pepper her speech. Verdict: That dog don't hunt.

earmarks — 1. To designate/gift funds to a pet project or state that could not exist without them. 2. Visible scarring caused about the otic lobe by mating Palins.

Head of Skate — "Really bad Disney movie" starring Herself as a hockey mom.

hockey mom — A group (of purported lipstick-wearers [though generally not in the author's experience]) to which Herself desperately wants to belong, though the hockey moms no longer want her kind.

lipstick — A waxy, pigmented cosmetic worn on the lips by pigs and purportedly by hockey moms (though generally not in the author's experience).

Maverick — A rear-wheel drive gas-guzzling compact that gained some notoriety back during the era of the Vietnam War.

moose stew — Purportedly Herself's favorite meal. See also faux populist back-story.

nucular — "Folksy" nuclear pronunciation favored by Herself and by George W. Bush. Coincidence, or cause for (even greater) concern?

palbatross — Something that causes persistent deep concern or anxiety. See John McCain, health of.

palgebra — The fuzzy math used by Herself while making grandiose claims about her experience and, say, the U.S. domestic energy supply.

palienation — A withdrawing or separation of voters' affections from Herself.

palimeano — A journalist (or just Joe Six-Pack) who asks a "gotcha" question.  [Entry submitted by TWM reader JayDenver]

palimitator — Tina Fey.

palimmolation — The act of Herself sacrificing at the altar of public/media scrutiny beyond her RNC acceptance speech.

palimprovisation — Unflattering and painful stammering and generalities that occur when journalists ask questions that demand knowledge of the issues. See also deer moose in headlights.

palinability — The lack of sufficient capability to be Vice President. See also Quayle, J. Danforth.

palinanity — Lack of substance; vapid, pointless, or fatuous character.

palinauguration — Please, God, no.

palincantation — A written or recited formula of words designed to produce a particular effect. See also "I told them 'Thanks but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere."

palinception — The commencement of human life that happens when Palins mate. Often results in names including but not limited to Bristol, Piper, Track, Willow, and Trig.

palincinerator — See Couric, Katie.

palindigestion — What Herself causes John McCain when she answers voters' questions on camera while palandering for votes.

palindrone — Empty gibberish that when spoken by a smiling, chipper Palin sounds the same backwards as it does forwards.

palinertia — A property of matter by which Herself remains in free-fall unless acted upon by some external force.

Palinese — The native language of Herself. Somewhere between English and utter horse hockey.

palinference — Faulty syllogism.  [Entry submitted by long-time TWM reader Milena]

palingenesis — 1. Political reinvention on a national level. 2. Embryonic development that reproduces the ancestral features of the Palin family (opposed to cheneygenesis). 3. Baptism in the evangelical faith.

palingual — Having the ability to speak both Palinese and English.

palinmony — The allowance the Palins attempted to levy against their former brother-in-law in the form of his forced dismissal as a state trooper. See also troopergate.

palinoscopy — A nationally televised procedure involving Katie Couric. Somewhat uncomfortable for the subject, and perversely entertaining/educational for the audience.

palinterest — Waning fast.

palinthropy — A philanthropic act or gift to one's Alaskan constituents. See also earmarks.

palintine — A feudal lord seeking sovereign power over her domains.

Palintino — A font family used for both text and display type. Its letters have a shapely enough body, but include expensive and overly-showy serifs.

palintology — "The [disturbing] study of [Herself] and how she sees the world."

palintoxication — The stupefying effect Herself has on "fair and balanced" Fox News anchors despite her palincompetence.

palintriloquism — The magical art of political ventriloquism. Boy, when they're really on their game, you can barely see McCain's mouth move when Palin speaks.  [Entry submitted by TWM reader JayDenver]

palioclimatology — The anti-science of claiming that humans are in no way responsible for climate change.

paliolithic age — 44, or roughly half that of John McCain.

pall — vb. To become pale; to lose strength or effectiveness when asked substantive questions. n. Something that covers or conceals the issues.

pallbearer — A handler who manages Herself in an attempt to keep her from speaking.

pallinative care — Medical treatment that aims to alleviate or reduce the suffering caused by Herself.

pallinator — An agent that pollinates Palins.

Paltoids™ — Something you take to freshen your breath but that ends up stinging your mouth, making you wish you could spit it out politely.  [Entry submitted by long-time TWM reader Sanjuro]

Palzheimer's disease — A degenerative disease of the central nervous system characterized esp. by the forgetfulness of inconvenient facts (or even convenient ones).

ta — Used as a function word to express motion or indicate direction toward, as in "Please, just send me back ta Wasilla."  [Entry submitted by TWM reader ItWasAFumble]

vindication — What herself claimed to feel after the Troopergate verdict, despite the findings of the court.

Wasilla — Herself's often-invoked hometown. She paints a folksy picture, but it's palinhospitable to the objective eye.

Bipartisan Bingo

This one's interactive. But don't worry, it demands only partial attention, and can be completed while drinking. Click the image below to print out your own Bipartisan Bingo cards, just in time for the debates. Then tune in this Friday night, 9:00 EST, watch closely, and mark the generalizations and platitudes as you hear them. First one to BINGO wins a Caribou Barbie Sarah Palin bobblehead!*

*Not actually true. (Alas, the expected bobblehead earmarks have since been diverted to Alaska.)

Corporate Doublespeak

Note: This piece was originally published in The Boston Globe, in slightly different form.

There is a virus rampant in the business world that has slowly infected our lives outside of the office. It's not an e-mail worm this time. It's not a Microsoft bug. It's not spam. It's the babble we all use in our attempts to communicate with each other.

Or, to put it in a language we all think we understand: In our rush to ramp up our skill sets and partner with new media companies for value-added, win-win business solutions that leverage our knowledge base to maximize customer take-away, we've forgotten how to explain ourselves clearly and concisely.

In his great essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell argues convincingly that sloppy language allows us to have foolish thoughts. And we use sloppy language and have foolish thoughts now more than ever in the business world. Further, we propagate both.

The fact is, we have come to accept the obscure muddle of business-speak, and in doing so, we accept mediocrity itself. I'm not talking about poor spelling and grammar — though they're certainly not beside the point — I'm talking about our favorite adjective-turned-noun: content.

The folks in Marketing like to call it verbiage — that is, when they're not mispronouncing it "verbage." Ironically, verbiage is the perfect description of what too many of us are guilty of in the workplace. It doesn't simply mean "content," as most assume; it means "a profusion of words usually of little or obscure content." Yes, we do love our verbiage. We use pre-fab word bundles where one word will do. We say job function instead of "job," or top-line growth instead of "sales."

As George Carlin said, ''People add extra words when they want to sound more important than they really are.''

Words or phrases become clichéd through their use and misuse. But many of the buzzwords we use every day mean little to begin with. One well-respected new media company has since become more exacting, but in an earlier published incarnation of their mission statement,  billed themselves as a ''digital solutions provider that helps organizations generate competitive value by leveraging the power of technology.'' Sure, it sounds good, but what is it such a company does?

This corporate doublespeak turns adjectives into nouns, nouns into verbs, verbs into nouns, and humans into resources — all of which slowly converts our workplace into the cartoon world of Dilbert, and fills business meetings with the sweet nothings of executing on our strategy and bringing critical mass to our efforts. But the yes-men create value by yes-ing, and generally keep their jobs by simply regurgitating whatever text fills the latest PowerPoint slides, and the cycle repeats itself.

Much of our failure to communicate is the fault of consulting groups, who feed us their own rich sub-genre of euphemisms such as sub-optimal and developmental opportunities to downplay corporate inadequacies. Coworkers are never laid off; they are affected by a reduction in force, as a result of global sourcing (read: sending American jobs to India, China, etc.) or synergies (read: redundancies) due to acquisitions. Not to worry — layoffs help us become more agile in the marketplace.

My argument is bigger than semantic nitpicking. I taught college lit long enough to know that Orwell's 1984 illustrates the fact that for great ideas to exist, we need precise language with which to express those ideas. And too many know-nothing managers and VPs have yes-ed themselves into positions as the overmatched CEOs of today. Part of the reason many companies are tanking is that so many foolish thinkers hold positions of power. While high economic times allow poor management to hide behind the smokescreen of verbiage, difficult times do not.

Case in point: George W. Bush — our first MBA president. Face it, he had some of the best consultants and spin-meisters in the world working for him, and his well-spun jargon on the heels of the dot-com boom made him sound credible to nearly half of American voters back in the fall of 2000. Needless to say, those same folks eventually began to wonder when we were going to see any of the purported "compassion" in Bush's conservatism, and whether we would ever find enough palpable "evil" in Iraq to outweigh the continuing loss of American lives.

This is not to single out President Bush — though he deserves it — as there are plenty of politicos on both sides of the aisle who play fast and loose with the English language that we would all be well-advised to mind the flashy but nonsensical sound bites this election season. Unexamined, they will only serve to reward and further mediocrity — and what a waste, in a country founded on revolutionary thinking and the clarity of a few strongly worded documents.

We should not feel so threatened by such concise language, at work and at home, nor by novel ideas, by smart people. We need to hold accountable our managers, our VPs, our CEOs, when they start tossing around rhetorical cotton candy. I'm sure they have more to offer than they're currently able to express.

For that matter, we could all be a bit smarter and more creative, and certainly more intelligible, if we were not so apathetically liaising with our colleagues and having, as Mr. Bush the younger might say, important discussions about topics in regard to which we're speaking.

But not to worry: a consultant friend of mine assures me that though our situation may appear sub-optimal, ultimately, it presents us all with tremendous developmental opportunities.

So we've got that going for us....

Ear Words

One summer during college, I DJ'd a weekly (early) AM radio show. My roommate, Brett, had a job that summer that required him to get up each morning at 6:50. The night before each radio show, I'd sneak into Brett's room, set his clock radio to my station, and turn up the volume. The next morning, at 6:50 on the nose, I'd be playing the poppiest, most insipid, incessant song I could find. The Ramones, They Might Be Giants, maybe the Hemingway 7" by an odd little band called Blue Clocks Green — which may still be the catchiest thing I've ever heard (and through the magic of "the internets" you can hear it too). In any case, I considered the day's show a success if my earworm song was indeed embedded in Brett's head that night.

I imagine the phenomenon of a song that is stuck in one's head has been around as long as songs themselves. Now, thanks to the Germans, who also gave us obscure international hockey player Petr Draisaitl, we call this an "earworm" — from their word ohrwurm — which, translated literally, means "lyrics to Rappers Delight."

My wife, AKL, is an easy mark for earworms. She will freely admit that her internal life soundtrack is one of the most stunted one could ever hear. It sounds like a compilation K-Tel and John Hughes might have released in the mid-'80s. I'm not quite so troubled by these traditional earworms, but they roll around my brain enough that when AKL says, "Guess what song I have in my head," I generally cover my ears, jabber loudly, and run to the bathroom.

No, my true sleep-killer is not the classic earworm song per se, but rather earworm language. I get words and phrases in my head, phonetic constructions, odd syntax, and, worse still, names of obscure and long-forgotten hockey players. My sleep has been disturbed many a night by the odd sound or syllabic stress of bygone hockey names like Steve Konowalchuk, Jim Peplinski, Simon Nolet, Wilf Paiement, and Reijo Ruotsalainen.

Foreign spellings and pronunciations linger in my craw like stubborn phlegm, with their seemingly misplaced or extra letters. Former Soviet and Russian players: Kharlamov, Zelepukin, Mogilny, Afinogenov, Afanasenkov. And then there is the daddy of them all: German national team member Petr Draisaitl. I have no recollection whatsoever of any details about this guy other than his name. He was nothing near an outstanding player. But his name haunts me still, those bevel-edged consonants occasionally clanging together in my otherwise empty head at 3 a.m. like some complex math problem.

Some of my earworms are much simpler. Friends and I noted a few years back that Brits often pronounce "tuna" as "chuna." That one kept me awake a while, just repeating the sound of it in my mind. Place names, too, can be problematic: Monongahela, Nesowadnehunk, Coxsackie. Fuggedaboutit.

And it's not just language. I can get caught up on conceptual earworms too — the latest being the seemingly crucial thought that somehow the entire universe hinges on a simple combination of Murphy's Law and Occam's Razor. That is to say something along the lines of "the thing most likely to go wrong will go wrong."

Sometimes large chunks of text get stuck in my brain: the middle section of the Jewish mourner's Kaddish; a Henry V monologue I learned once for acting; much of the repetition in Tim O'Brien's great The Things They Carried. Sometimes, I can read something only once or twice and bits will stay with me forever. (Admittedly, the bits that don't much matter, but still.)

The construction and language of poet Michael S. Harper's For Bud (Powell) is that way:

For Bud

Could it be, Bud
that in slow galvanized
fingers beauty seeped
into bop like Bird
weed and Diz clowned—
Sugar waltzing
back into dynamite,
sweetest left hook you
ever dug, baby;
could it violate violence
Bud, like Leadbelly's
chaingang chuckle,
the candied yam
twelve string clutch
of all blues:
there's no rain
anywhere, soft
enough for you.

Man, I fall hard for that thing every time, like I do for Mary Stuart Masterson in that awful guilty-pleasure Some Kind of Wonderful, or for Juliette Binoche in, well, anything. Some things are just goddamn Shakespeare to my ears, or eyes, as it were.

I don't know if anyone else out there has my affliction, aside from maybe my brother, who shares some of the same obsessive-compulsive hockey knowledge. If you do, please send me the cure. Is there some form of substitution I could be doing, a la "Maim That Tune"?

I eagerly await your comments and answers. Until then, I'll remain thankful each day this haole doesn't live in Hawai'i (god love you for that apostrophe). I might not sleep again, with all those polysyllabic words in which every other letter is a vowel. Even looking at the following words as I type them, hits me like a brace of Blue Hawaiians: MELE KALIKIMAKA!

 

Kitties and Dogs 2: Of Women and Socks

With the addition of two baby girls in the past two years, I've been coming to terms with the suddenly elevated levels of estrogen in the house. We have a 3-month-old, and her 22-month-old sister, RK — who is currently exhibiting her newfound "big girl" maturity by breastfeeding her dolls. I suppose I can turn to our boy cats for a little male bonding, but well, they're cats.

And then there is RK's exponentially expanding vocabulary. For starters, we're having a risqué pronunciation issue. Apparently, the "s" sound is a difficult one for the young palate to make. Most toddlers substitute a "t" sound, as RK does for the word "see," which becomes "tee." But, tee, here's the rub: it should follow that those cotton or wool things one wears under one's shoes would be "tocks." Not so for young RK — who, instead, begins that word with a hard "c."

[S]ock. As in adult male fowl, to set a trigger for firing, etc. It's also, mind you, the way she pronounces the following similar words: clock, quack, cluck, truck.

The thing of it is, when you have a vocabulary of maybe two hundred words, and your existence revolves around eating, sleeping, pooping, and getting dressed, you tend to lean heavily on a word like sock. It, "hat," "mitten," and "shoe" — which she somehow pronounces infinitely better than sock — are the only clothing words in her permanent lexicon. So as she happily sifts through the clean laundry trying to match up socks in our house of four bi-peds, she'll say things like, "Daddy [s]ock. Mommy [s]ock. Baby [s]ock."

I'm not sure how the ubiquitous parenting for dummies sort of books tell you to handle these "little kids say the darndest things" moments, but we live in Boston, and her pronunciation gives entirely new meaning to a certain ubiquitous local world champion baseball team. (She, of course pronounces "red" just fine.) In other instances, whether in public or at home, I like to occasionally humor young RK by pronouncing words the same way she does. So, instead of saying "more," we say "mao," and "dieboo" instead of "diaper." Red [S]ox? Not so much.

And this [s]ock business only serves to underscore the fact that among the words one is curious to learn at that age is — well — what to call the thing between one's legs.

With all due respect to Eve Ensler, vagina's just not a word I use a lot. OK, ever. Rather — with heartfelt thanks to an ex-girlfriend and her sister — I prefer the term they used growing up: wahine. It's Hawaiian for woman, which is a nice, strong image, it rolls smoothly off the tongue, and well, it's not vagina. In any case, it's what I call it. Even to my wife. Who rolls her eyes in a way remarkably similar to my own when she refers to my hockey socks as leg warmers.

I realize vagina’s a proper medical term and all, but so is “bowel movement” and doctors don't even use that anymore. (It’s as if there was some sort of medical Vatican II a few years ago wherein it was decided that “poop” would heretofore be the officially-sanctioned term of record.)

Mind you, when I get out of the shower and RK points inquiringly to my naked midsection, I say, "That's right, daddy has a penis, because daddy's a boy. But you and mommy and your sister are girls, so you have a wahine." Double standard? Yes. Do I care? No.

Sorry, RK- you and your mom and baby sister can have your little Our Bodies Ourselves rallies to your hearts' delight as you grow older. Me, well, I do have the cats on my side. C'mon boys, join me: have a couple beers in the old sweat lodge, get a little drum circle together, scratch yourselves. Rock out with your sock out!

The Truth about Kitties and Dogs

The problem with cats sometimes is that, well, they’re not dogs. A few weeks back, I called our cats so they’d come downstairs in the way a dog might. Nothing happened. I called again. Nothing. I looked at my wife, AKL, who said, “You have to call them in a higher voice — like I do — and you have to say, “Here, kitty kitty kitties….” She does so. And it works.

My problem with this is twofold: I refuse to use the “here, kitty” voice; and, well, I refuse to say the word “kitty.”

Over our six years of marriage, I’ve noticed that, though AKL and I ostensibly communicate well and are both native English speakers, we have different lexicons. There are words that she, as a woman, uses that I simply cannot. I’m not talking about sex-organ–specific slang or bodily function sorts of words that make some uneasy, I’m talking about everyday English.

In addition to kitties, there exist furry little bushy-tailed animals that hop around. I would call those creatures rabbits. I’ve always called them rabbits. AKL calls them bunnies. (Note: She also sometimes playfully calls our “kitties” bunnies. But I digress.) I would say I’m shorter than Shaquille O’Neal; AKL would say I’m littler. I have a stomach; she has a tummy.

AKL wears tops, I wear shirts. She wears jammies to bed, I wear boxers. No offense to the more fashionable guys out there, but men wear clothes, not outfits. And those things that professional sports teams wear when playing a game — they are not outfits either, they’re uniforms.

I’ve played ice hockey with cracked ribs. I’ve gone solo camping miles from civilization. I’ve done a gut rehab on our kitchen. It’s not that I’m not secure enough in my manhood to use these female-centric words, it’s just that — well — okay, maybe in part it is that I’m not secure enough in my manhood.

For bunnies to exist in my world would be to overturn too much I learned about living in the world as a man. The list of movies that can make me cry may start and end with Brian’s Song. Okay, maybe I misted up a bit when the Red Sox won it all in '04 — but not in a bunnies sort of way.

Still, I’m not suggesting that I’m a stereotypical guy. I grew up with a sister and female cousins, and I’m very sensitive — I own clogs for god’s sake. A friend’s wife even likes to suggest that he and I fall into a small sect of men who make great husbands because we’re “just gay enough.” Meaning, we cook better than our wives, dress ourselves well, and can use big words during a football game despite the fact that we’re straight. But still, that Y chromosome prevents Girl Words from even entering my brain, let alone escaping my mouth.

I should mention here, too, that AKL is by no means a girly-girl. She doesn’t wear makeup, hates perfumy smells, understands the rules of all major sports, and can bait her own fishing hooks.

But she’ll refer to my hockey socks as leg warmers. And when pressed, she might admit her favorite thing is cuddling.

So when your husband or wife, or sister, or mother, or whomever, claims that sometimes it’s like the two or you are speaking different languages, well, maybe there’s something to it.

I have friends up in Montreal whose colloquial Quebecois French is a different sort from the type I learned back in high school. So we communicate in a halting patois that is neither English nor French. Alcohol generally helps our understanding, but certain concepts are invariably beyond simple translation.

Similarly, the gendered lexicon surely limits us at times. It can be frustrating, but ultimately maybe it’s for the best. Let AKL have her secret world of kittycats and bunnies. Some things are innate — where I hear song lyrics, she hears something more like the sound made by Charlie Brown’s teacher — and it’s our differences, rather than our common ground, that give us things to laugh about.

If we can’t change our spots, I suppose the cats can’t either. I might not be able to teach them to come running when I call “C’mon, boys” — but they sure do jump to the sound of their food cans being opened.