I don't think you're thinking what I'm thinking.
I would just like to begin by observing that, had I been writing the first version of this post on my mac, I would never have lost it because of the computer randomly freezing as I tried to post.
Yesterday, I came to a realization: the rest of you don’t think the same way I do. I realize that that idea probably keeps some of you warm at night, and I have, for years, known that many people find me weird, but I haven’t really understood why. Yesterday, I think I have finally grasped what’s wrong with you all: you’re not literal minded enough.
When I was a child, I remember being taught about the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the Revolution. The first one, Lexington, started with the Shot Heard Around The World. As a child, I was fascinated by this event. How did they know that it was heard all over the world? Did they check? Did reports come in from China, or ambassadors asking ‘hey, what was that gun shot last week?’ What peculiar conditions allowed the sound of that one particular shot, as opposed to all the other shots before or since, to carry so far? Was it random, or was it somehow connected to the importance of the events that day? As a teenager, I one day realized that it was just a metaphor. I wondered why the grown ups hadn’t bothered to explain that.
This is how I think about everything I read, see, or hear. And, it’s not limited just to figures of speech. For instance, when I saw Underworld, it bothered me from the opening scene, because (apart from the cinematographer laying the mood on too thick), Kate Beckinsale drops from a church steeple over 100 to the pavement below. And no one notices. Moreover, OK, she’s undead, it doesn’t hurt her, fine, but unless she ways next to nothing, the force of her impact should have shattered the concrete slab upon which she lands. And could those cute boots of hers really stand up to that impact? I bet that didn’t bother most of you, but it drove me nuts.
I think that this mental quirk is connected to my ADD, which is, after all, just jargon for ‘my brain works abnormally.’
[Oh, and Syd, this is the heart of why I’m interested in the history and meanings of words: because quite often buried within them are literal meanings that interestingly contrast or even contradict their current usage. A fabulous example is ‘manufacture’ which literally means ‘to make by hand.’]
Yesterday, I came to a realization: the rest of you don’t think the same way I do. I realize that that idea probably keeps some of you warm at night, and I have, for years, known that many people find me weird, but I haven’t really understood why. Yesterday, I think I have finally grasped what’s wrong with you all: you’re not literal minded enough.
When I was a child, I remember being taught about the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the Revolution. The first one, Lexington, started with the Shot Heard Around The World. As a child, I was fascinated by this event. How did they know that it was heard all over the world? Did they check? Did reports come in from China, or ambassadors asking ‘hey, what was that gun shot last week?’ What peculiar conditions allowed the sound of that one particular shot, as opposed to all the other shots before or since, to carry so far? Was it random, or was it somehow connected to the importance of the events that day? As a teenager, I one day realized that it was just a metaphor. I wondered why the grown ups hadn’t bothered to explain that.
This is how I think about everything I read, see, or hear. And, it’s not limited just to figures of speech. For instance, when I saw Underworld, it bothered me from the opening scene, because (apart from the cinematographer laying the mood on too thick), Kate Beckinsale drops from a church steeple over 100 to the pavement below. And no one notices. Moreover, OK, she’s undead, it doesn’t hurt her, fine, but unless she ways next to nothing, the force of her impact should have shattered the concrete slab upon which she lands. And could those cute boots of hers really stand up to that impact? I bet that didn’t bother most of you, but it drove me nuts.
I think that this mental quirk is connected to my ADD, which is, after all, just jargon for ‘my brain works abnormally.’
[Oh, and Syd, this is the heart of why I’m interested in the history and meanings of words: because quite often buried within them are literal meanings that interestingly contrast or even contradict their current usage. A fabulous example is ‘manufacture’ which literally means ‘to make by hand.’]