One American Ten Years After

The youngest child in a family gets special privileges, especially if the she is gifted. 

A gifted baby not only gets special recognition, but also special protections.  Much is forgiven the gifted child.   

All are delighted when a golden child performs.  Soon her talents afford her special dispensation:  the golden child is exceptional.  Family members take note and look to her for a model to follow, for leadership. As the golden child goes, so goes the world. 

In fact, family members soon expect the fair-haired one to share the rewards of her special skills with those less fortunate.  If things go wrong, siblings look to her to take the lead in making them right again.  With privilege comes responsibility after all. 

Naturally, based on her experience, the exceptional child develops her own expectations.  She expects the special treatment showered on her to continue.  She dons the leadership mantle and steps to the forefront without looking back, knowing that the others will fall in line. 

The extraordinary girl grows to believe she is loved by all, held up by all, respected, admired, emulated by all. 

But all is not well in the exceptional young woman’s world.  While many rejoice in her success and gladly look up to her beacon of enlightenment and goodwill, others become angry, jealous, surly.   

They see she is imperfect.  What’s more, she blocks their sunlight.  She steals their place leaving only cool shadows.  They are tramped upon when she exceeds her bounds, bounds she does not recognize at all. 

And so a sibling plots and plans to show the world and the gifted girl.  The wounded, angry sibling strikes out with the fury of a betrayed lover, brazenly, publicly, on a stunning scale, on September 11, 2001. 

And from that day forward, we citizens of the exceptional United States have trod more lightly.  We have thought twice.  We have heard the gossip and the sneers from behind our backs.  We’ve seen our flawless grace and our bright innocence fade, our altruistic motives challenged --- they were altruistic, weren’t they? 

For our gifted, exceptional country, the legacy of September 11^th, at least in part, has been humility and circumspection.  Maybe it’s not all about us after all.  

On September 11th, I was principal at a middle school.  We had 750 students aged 11 to 13. 

As the news from New York streamed in that bright day, I had the TV on in my office to see the Twin Towers battered and aflame.  Smoke billowed and flowed without end across the cloudless sky. 

Already, we had suffered the loss of a sixth grader, hit by a car.  I knew these students and the staff would want calm and security.  So when the requests came into my office to watch the news in classrooms, I said no.  Social Studies teachers did not agree with my decision.  We should let these kids see history in the making. 

Then the Towers fell and fell and fell.  A second volley of requests came in.  The teachers wanted to see, but they were unsure if it was okay to let the kids watch.  Better ask Carolyn.  No, I said no. 

We had a peaceful day at school September 11th.  The kids ran and played almost like always.   

Our son was a junior in high school and played defensive line against a formidable rival that Friday.  My husband and I sat in the stands with the same parents we’d known through elementary school bunch ball (soccer), baseball, and wrestling.  We cheered and chanted like always, on the skin of the bubble at least.  Beneath that fragile membrane though, our hearts constricted and our eyes turned skyward too often. 

A year later I moved on to the high school.  On a crisp fall day all 1700 students and staff, released for lunch, milled about the corridors and the quad, when olive drab Air Force transports began flying low overhead.  Again and again they banked above us, hanging ridiculously close and impossibly static in the air.  

Touch and go practice flights, I surmised, though I’d never seen such a pattern so close to the school.  The quad, normally alive with the laughter and squeals of healthy teenagers, grew still, edgy.  Feeling ill at ease myself, but hoping to allay the kids’ anxiety, I raised my hand to wave at a pilot.  Just then, a sophomore jogged to my side and said, “Look Mrs. Plath!  Osama!” 

So for me it’s ever-present now, part of the legacy of September 11, 2001, those threads of disquiet woven into the fabric of our formerly golden lives. 

But it’s not about me, or is it?

Who Gets to Chose Banned Words?

So Lake Superior State University (LSSU) published its annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.

I’m not sure where they get off thinking they’re the arbiters of my clichés. I think it must have come in one of those moments when someone declares himself an expert, and before you know it, folks begin going to him for insights they could probably glean themselves.

In fact, LSSU's list began in1976 in just that way. Their former Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and a group of his friends each contributed a few expressions that they disliked to form the first list. After that, the nominations stacked up for future lists and Rabe's group didn't have to make up its own list again.

Here’s the way it works: Some clever person somewhere turns a unique phrase, say. “Think outside the box.” Then, the rest of us lazy folk pick it up and wear it out, thereby irritating the “experts” at LSSU. They put it on the list, and tell us to stop pretending it’s still clever and unique.

Or, we, the non-expert masses, start groaning when we hear the phrase due to its unfortunate association with something or someone unpleasant, or lacking credibility. Then, it doesn’t go viral (another banished word this year), but rather shrivels in infamy.

Speaking of which, I noticed several Palin-isms made the list. One contributor said of "refudiate," “Adding this word to the English language simply because a part-time politician lacks a spell checker on her cell phone is an action that needs to be repudiated.” Here, here!

LSSU also panned “mamma grizzlies” and “man up”; two other phrases linked with Palin. I wonder if this is a whiff of her part-time future.

So anyway, according to LSSU, we should stop saying, “I’m just sayin’.” It’s just that I don’t wanna give that one up yet…just sayin’. It’s kind of fun and funny. It’s like a fuzzy kitten on the curb on the corner. I found it. I’m keeping it. I promise to feed it and it can sleep in my room. I know it won’t be so cute when it matures into a fully fledged expression, probably something like, “I’m telling you!” But I will deal with that when the time comes.

Of course the internet has accelerated the tipping point. A person gets quoted and becomes an authority if the web, the press, and the masses say so. A word achieves national, truly world-wide status in moments. Think “junk.”

In that vein, the LSSU list pans “Google” as a verb. Now that’s just plain snooty. Why isn’t it okay to add this to our lexicon when it so clearly and aptly conveys exactly what we’re doing? The alternative would be wordier and no more explicit. If they have their way, we won’t be saying, “I googled your address.” But, “I looked your address up with my internet search engine.”

I think I’ll make a couple of nominations this year. First, I think we should stop saying, “is, is.” For example when asked, “What is a tiddly-wink?” it has become common for a person to answer, “What it is, is a disk that is flipped in a goofy game…” (What is a tiddly-wink, anyway? Bad example, but hang with me.)

The point is that saying “is, is” annoys me. (I think I’m using the same criteria they use in Michigan.) Better to respond by not starting your answer with “What,” but rather with the item in question, “A tiddly-wink is a disk…” and then you look it up and complete your more pleasingly appropriate sentence. Thank you.

In 2002, the folks at LSSU put “9-11” and all its variations on the banned list, but the phrase lives on, in spite.

I agree with the nominators from 2002 who said, “Do we refer to the Chicago Fire as 10-8 because it occurred on Oct. 8, 1871? How about the sinking of the Titanic - it is not called 4-14. People are abbreviating the worst act of war this country has seen since Pearl Harbor. I've never heard anybody refer to the attack on Pearl Harbor as 12-7.

“A tragic event of such proportion should not be confused with a telephone number. The name will be remembered as long as there are people who can read."

It was September 11th, 2001, the attack on the World Trade Center.

Out of reverence and respect, I think we can take the time to speak the words.

I’m just sayin’.