LET'S COMMUNICATE

When walking in the mountains, like, I saw two people, like, building, like, a fire in a picnic grill. Like, this fire was so hot, I thought they’d set fire, like, to the trail. Like, it was awful!

When people express themselves in this unlikely manner, it causes my teeth to itch, and I want to suggest, “Go back to talking with your thumbs.” Of course, there is no embellishment in thumb talk, and it gets right to the point: “Hikd up Mt. 2 people set fire. Scard me. How R U?”

Nowadays, you should never expect to receive a letter. People are too busy to put words on paper. Of course, people in the “olden days” were never busy. However, I am grateful to receive e-mails from dear ones, but it is really difficult to put a blue ribbon on a keepsake saved in a cloud.

Letters from famous people have been a boon to authors and historians, and love letters have held a special place in many a heart. Whereas, I don’t think Hillary Clinton’s e-mails or Donald Trump’s tweets are worth collecting.

I was recently in a restaurant where two people were having a loud and extremely dumb argument about which one of them had a smarter telephone. Both phones won.

The English language is very robust and constantly changing with the times, but we have become sloppy communicators  (if that’s what you want to call it.) Have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone who is making eye contact with her screen? In the middle of, what you thought was a conversation, she just might say, “Oh, here’s a picture of my son’s bucktoothed dog, Nipper.” And, then, thrusting the phone into your face, she says, “Isn’t he cute?” It is then that you should respond, “Which one’s Nipper?” It won’t hurt her feelings, because most likely she isn’t listening anyway. It is then that you might realize that a conversation should involve more than one person.

I have nothing against technology, but as soon as I learn the language about how something works, the machine becomes obsolete, along with the language used to describe its function. To make my point, does anyone remember Fortran?

But getting back to the basics, no one seems to care about grammar anymore either. For instance, how many times have you heard, “Me and Flinkus, got caught in the rain.” The only way, “Me” could have gotten caught with Flinkus in the rain is if Meeee is a Chinese name, and she isn’t You!

Today, if you’d ask a young person to diagram a sentence, I’m sure that he just might reply, “What’s a sentence?”  And, then, we are left with LOL.

Esther Blumenfeld (The fire set on the mountain trail  was extinguished by two rangers. They gave the grill-happy-pyro-nincompoops, a good talking to. Yes, there is still hope. It can be done!)