Saturday, April 23, 2011

Old Boyfriends

I was working on my novel today and got distracted. This is nothing new. It's my modus operandi. I often listen to YouTube clips while writing. Stuff from the 60's and 70's usually. Or 80's New Wave and punk. The years before I turned thirty. Everything recorded after that lost a bit of charm. I surfed through solo John Lennon and Paul McCartney, circa '73, early Elvis Costello and vintage Otis Redding. Then I decided to indulge myself and watch a few musicians I've known personally. This can be a dangerous exercise, depending on the quality of the video. There's the garage band rocker who was a fellow actor in the ensemble cast of Hamlet. A long-haired folkie covering James Taylor and Cat Stevens in some coffeehouse. A wired performance artist heavily influenced by David Byrne. Eventually, I took a peek at the oldest in a long line of old boyfriends who's in an active, in demand quartet. Their music is a kitchen sink of styles and the man in question plays lead guitar. I send a link to my sister, sigh and return to the page.

Like a faded, frayed pair of jeans that feels like a second skin, old boyfriends are unavoidable. They don't often show up in Real Life, but they exist forever in the imagination. They co-authored the romance novel you can't put down. They turned you on to music you hadn't thought to listen to, or to Boone's Farm or recreational drugs. They turned you on. Joni Mitchell sang, "songs are like tattoos," and with her history she should know: old boyfriends are indelible graffiti. Whether or not they dumped you or you dumped them, their epilogues occupy an inordinate number of pages in your journals. Admit it: you still have traces of them, tucked into books, mementos buried under bad poetry you wrote your freshman year in college. You have pictures where you are eternally eighteen or twenty-three. An arm flung around your shoulder, the knowing glance, a kiss snapped by someone's Instamatic. Yeah, we're talking pre-digital days.

The best part about old flames is that the fire is out. That painful longing is over, the obsessive-compulsive disorder of the heart has healed. Sure, you still have the photo albums, but the prints have aged so much they stick to the backing under plastic. They're cardboard cut-outs who no longer haunt your every move or dictate your wardrobe choices. Now you have a longtime companion called a husband. Unlike most ex-boyfriends he's seen you with unwashed hair and the stomach flu. You wear a shabby pair of sweatpants and the same shirt three days in a row, around the house where the two of you live. If he doesn't return your phone calls you don't lose sleep. You have a normal appetite and can snarf down half a dozen cookies in front of him. You don't attach deep significance to every offhand remark he makes. He's seen your crow's feet multiply and has watched you give birth.

There are times when I'd like to take a lover. Board a jet and fly abroad to meet some clandestine suitor in Paris. Sometimes old boyfriends look promising during Facebook chats and in those quickly deleted emails. But invariably, like the hubby, they're twenty pounds heavier and/or have gone bald. I count my blessings--mine looks reasonably close to the original version. The trick with former flings is to use their staying power to your advantage. Like I said, I was working on my novel today...

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

The King's Speech

My mother used to complain about people who butchered the "king's English." Proper use of language was of paramount importance to Mom, and her daughters were roundly chastised for poor elocution. I remember slaps on the wrist when I committed grammatical errors. Like any child, I detested such corrections and wondered why she made a federal case out of every slip. Years later, I'm grateful for her high standards. Everywhere we turn in today's media-saturated, info-overload world we see and hear unforgivable fracturing of our native tongue. From print to broadcast to the average Joe's daily dish, we sound like blithering ignoramuses. The atmosphere is replete with examples but I'll focus on just a few linguistic sins.

It really chaps my butt to hear people misuse "I" and "me." How many times must we endure guests on talk shows say "It was really painful for my wife and I to put our son in rehab." Omitting the spouse from the sentence it reads, "It was really painful for I to put my son in rehab." It's like music: you hear a flat note, it stands out, it doesn't ring, it's obvious. Not to scores of interview subjects, who would routinely add, "Me and my husband wanted to kick Junior to the curb." News anchors, clergymen, sports commentators--they're all guilty.

Another glaring pet peeve: "is" versus "are." The politician will opine, "This is just the facts the American people are dealing with." Memo to members of Congress: These are the facts, etc. or It's just a fact Americans are dealing with every day. Invented words are an odious verbal assault we're subjected to in current discourse. Words that your grandfather wouldn't recognize. I'm talking about relatable. One can relate to the aggrieved parent who had to confiscate Johnny's twelve-pack and knock some sense into him. But I don't find said parent relatable because it just doesn't sound right. In fact, as I'm typing this, relatable is highlighted in red by the spell check feature. Yes, the online dictionary claims incentivize is a word but I'd just as soon hear the comment "we need to provide incentives." The spell checker lit up on that one too. Also, technically speaking, impacts should not be used as a verb. It's what happens when you're rear-ended in rush hour traffic. Or "my stickler of a mother had an impact on my blog post today."

So what are we to do with a nation of grammatically-challenged nincompoops? Good conversation, like charity, begins at home. If we want our children to retain any vestige of the king's speech we need to converse ably ourselves. To wit, my youngest son once reported to me that a friend of his didn't like being in our house "because [we] used big words." My answer? Book a different playdate. The bar has been substantially lowered, folks. Let's try some old Henry Higgins-style education. The next time you hear a talking head on TV screw up his syntax, fire off an email. Text or Twitter about it. Arrest the prevailing downward trend in the world of letters, lest we be left in tatters. Bring back the Noel Coward bon mot! Dare to dust up your diction! That way we can all be as pithy as Colin Firth accepting his Oscar.