September 24, 2018 – I took some flak from yesterday’s blog

         I ended it with:

P.S.  I don’t like to be bookmarked while you crack a dictionary for a word you don’t know. Look up it up on your own time, not while I am speaking.

         Maybe because I have worked with bosses that have extensive knowledge and language skills I’ve picked up a different vocabulary.  Or, maybe it is all those Agatha Christie books I inhaled as a pre-teen.  I also have a few friends that are extremely learned and have incredible language skills that I admire. 

Or, maybe because we moved around on company business – ten states in seven years - sure does increase your experience, your vocabulary, and your recipe repertoire in short order.

         In the last few years I have mentally questioned “bandwidth” as in “not in my bandwidth” and “one-off” as in “It was a one-off.”

         Without being obtrusive, I made a mental note of the phrase or word and later I cracked the electronic dictionary on my computer to understand what she was saying.  I didn’t bookmark her.  I didn’t admit I didn’t have a clue what she was actually saying.  I obviously didn’t show my ignorance, because she still might assume I have a brain in my head.

         What I did realize that these were “new terms used in the modern office” among young professionals – something I was not – since the last ten years of my professional life I worked in a one-person office.  Secondly, I think they were more of a regional difference in language – they hit her area before I heard them on the local news being bandied about.

         But, most of my friends know I occasionally squeeze under a rock or go under cover for a period of time – sometimes to lick my wounds – other times to recuperate or rejuvenate.   Sometimes they know I’m out of the mainstream on certain issues and I am not on the same page as them. When we are speaking they can see me squint my eyes questioning something they say and they elaborate more to get their point across.  I try not to let on – but most of the time they can guess – they are educated at body language. I don’t bookmark them and ask what a word is. Like learning any new word or phrase, I gather the jest of it in the context of the sentence.

         So part of me was shocked that someone stopped me mid-sentence and demanded to know what the word denude meant.  I wasn’t Lording it over her – it is part of my regular vocabulary.  Now that I think of it did she think I was saying something risqué - the “nude” popping out at her?

I guess I need to find a larger network of friends that have a better vocabulary than I have so that the “shoe is on the other foot.”  Still, I would mentally jot it down and look it up later. I wouldn’t insult my own intelligence.

I don’t know how to apologize for something I don’t think I need to apologize for.  I wasn’t rude, in fact, I didn’t chide her that she didn’t know.  I simply gave her the definition thinking that she might have forgotten what happened in natural history or science class which is many more decades ago than we both want to admit. [Hey, I still wonder is it a peninsular or an isthmus – but I don’t broadcast I don’t have a clue.  I know how to look it up.]

Occasionally I am brave enough to say at the tail end of the conversation, that I am not familiar with that term. And, many know I don’t run in the same crowds as they do or it could be a regional thing or a generational thing.

But, mostly this happens when I am talking with someone by telephone.  That is my number one reason for not liking telephone conversations.  The other person can’t “read” your face like they can in person.  I prefer face-to-face conversations which are not always possible.  Telephone conversations,  I feel, lead to more little white lies than I can admit to and I often recognize when someone abruptly ends a call – “Oh, got to go, got someone is buzzing in” when I broach to change the subject to something I want to talk about.

I give no apology for yesterday’s blog.

As a Southern friend said recently as she gets older in a new mantra:  “Deal with it, I am not changing”.

I’ll add that mantra to my use of too many dashes.  It’s just my way and I doubt I’ll change at this late date.