ANNE LOUISE
Maybe it's me ... but shouldn't the words in a sentence have meaning?
Communication has virtually ceased at my house. Having forbade the
use of the word "like" -- unless it is being used to convey a warm
fuzzy feeling -- I find that my children are unable to utter a single
sentence without being sent to look at "the poster."
"The poster," a creation of my very own, has the word "like"
inside one of those red circles with the slash -- the ones you see
drawn over a picture of a cigarette to communicate the "No Smoking"
rule. Initially, I thought this poster was a brilliant device. I
thought the poster would bring about peace, harmony and good grammar,
all without my having to say a word. When an infraction occurred, I
would just point to the poster. How perfectly simple and elegant.
It hasn't worked out as planned. Rather than improving the
verbalization skills of my family, it has brought communication to a
grinding halt. For the most part, this concerns me. However, it's
also rather pleasant. It's very peaceful, except for the 3-year-old.
Now, some might think that I should be happy just to have
communication in my home, and that I should be less picky about its
structure. But I feel it is my parental duty to see that my children
develop into adults fully able to participate in society, and that
would include ensuring that they have at least rudimentary
communication skills.
Recently, we embarked on a communication odyssey that began with
this sentence from our oldest, uttered in response to a question
about one of his teachers.
"He was like, you know, really like, yeah."
It took me a minute to react to this statement, because in all
reality, it wasn't one.
A statement, according to Funk & Wagnalls dictionary, is "a
summary of facts," for crying out loud. (I added that last bit.) And
in the so-called statement our child had just uttered, I could find
no information, no facts at all.
I proceeded to conduct a Sherlock Holmes investigation of that
sentence, out loud and with our son, who was none too happy to
participate. We parsed, I believe is the word. Actually, I parsed, he
moaned and looked at his feet, and his dad rolled his eyes --
continuously.
Here are the results of that parsing investigation:
He: Subject pronoun -- the teacher is a male. Good, that's
information. (However, it's information that I already had, and it's
not germane to the current discussion.)
Was: Verb -- whatever this man, as the subject of the sentence,
may have done or been is in the past tense.
Like: WARNING! WARNING! Word misused! Report to the poster!
You know: No, I don't know. That's why I asked you the question.
Really: Adverb -- designed to tell me that whatever it is
modifying is intense. (But I can't figure out what it's modifying, so
it's not helpful.)
Like: See above!
Yeah: Not an actual word, but a slang version of "yes."
So we have this statement: The man in the past tense was yes.
Perhaps some would differ with me, but I don't believe that this
is a summary of any facts.
I turn to my husband, who has now perfected his eye-rolling to the
point of turning it into a fine art. In the misguided belief that he
will back me up on correcting this oh-so-obvious communication
problem, I insist that he say something.
His response: "I'm like, speechless."
OK, this time I don't think it's me.
* ANNE LOUISE lives in
La Crescenta with her husband, five children, a dog, a cat, and
some fish. Reach her at annelouise@annelouise.net.
