Word Up

I love words. Reading and writing. Talking and listening. Swearing. My love of words is possibly why I ended up teaching English - despite the fact I don't really like kids, timetables or the entire education system.

I think about words a lot. Not just when I am writing, or when I was teaching, but all the time. All. The. Time. I think about: what I said; what I should have said; what I didn't say. I think about how I spoke to (or shouted at) the kids. About a quote that popped up on my insta feed, about a mantra I heard, about song lyrics on the radio. And so, so much more besides. Some may say, I 'overthink' when it comes to words...

Denver the last Dinosaur, those of you who grew up in UK in the 80s will know, was Wally's best friend '...and a whole lot more'. What that was exactly, years later, still bothers me. It has slightly sinister, sexual, connotations that I can't get past and I still wonder, even now, did the writers of the show do it on purpose? Much like those who named 'Seaman Staines' and 'Roger the Cabin Boy' in Captain Pugwash and those who scripted Rainbow must have.

I'll paste an example of a Rainbow script below. Take a quick look if you haven't seen the "Plucking Song" episode.

I rest my case on that one.

As a writer, I can't help myself. Words are my currency. Expressing what I'm thinking and seeing (on paper mostly) is my lifeline. I wont lie, this blog is definitely a form of therapy - and I'd say it's far more successful in keeping me sane than speaking to the counsellor I saw twice was. It's also a damn sight cheaper.

But weirdly, before I write, I don't think and I don't process. At least, not consciously. I sit down with a blank screen or sometimes a notebook and I start. Now and then a phrase I've read or an idea I've heard has made me do so. But often, it's just a basic need to write something down, like an itch that needs scratching. The shape of what my words will be isn't defined and planned out beforehand like I always used to tell the students good writing should be.

I have, for the last few months, been intending to write a blog on 'the division of labour in the modern home' and one about 'the universe's aptitude on the timings of friendships'. But each time I have felt like writing and started to work on them, something else has come out. Something I didn't even know I was thinking about...

The power of our own words to guide us and teach us is immense. Be that in written form or in conversation, real conversation, with those we love and/or trust. Or even, as happens on occasion, those rarest of moments when someone we don't know and may never see again gleans from us or guides us to some kind of insight and it changes us and our course forever. I'm thinking about you random Marmaris barman that showed me what I thought I wanted in life wasn't what I wanted at all, but rather happiness was much smaller and much safer than I had ever imagined.

Words have more dangerous powers as well though. Powers to shame and hurt. Powers to break and smother. Even now, some of the things I have said in the past stick with me and I am utterly ashamed of them.

Once I confessed I thought someone looked like a guinea pig who'd ran into a brick wall. Not to them. I wasn't that vile. But I was being mean because she was seeing the guy a friend liked and I was using the words in a misguided attempt to make my friend feel better. Naturally, it got back to her and when she confronted me, I did what any 14 year old girl who'd hurt someone did - and totally denied it. But the damage had been done. Whether it was me or the messenger, someone had likened her to a flattened rodent and I'll wager I'm not the only one who still remembers that 35 years later.

You'd have thought, after the 'Isabel looks like a Barbie doll with its head squashed in' I uttered age 7 in the playground and have been torturing myself for ever since, I'd have learnt my lesson - but clearly I hadn't. This one sticks with me particularly because not only is it mortifying in its meanness and the first time I ever really was, but because I was specifically asked as someone 'good with words' to come up with something nasty for another girl who had some kind of issue with Isabel to say to her - and I did. Even though it didn't sit at all comfortably with me and it would have been a million times easier and kinder to say I couldn't think of anything, I did.

Both comments are still in my mind decades later, because words hurt just as easily as they heal and as I have come to love and understand words, so too have I come to respect them. At times, I fear them. They don't just hurt those we are careless with either, but the words we speak, they hurt us too. As we explore them and consider them and find within them the kind of person we can be they can leave us as scarred as those we scratch with them. I'm a lot more careful with my words these days, knowing what they can do.

Red words, as Abe's kindy call them, have the ability to shock and to threaten. It amazes me that something as simple as air pushed from the lungs making our vocal cords vibrate can leave you feeling as if you'd been punched in the stomach or make you shake with fear. But they can.

So powerful are some words at belittling and oppressing that those they seek to hurt have no other alternative to reclaim them and reshape them before setting them free again. Which is admirable and brave and takes time. And that is something else that I love about words. Their fluidity.

Like humans and the societies in which we operate, words live too. They morph and change as they interact with us. Literally, actually means to take those words around it in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or exaggeration. But, whether it's the demographic of people I most hung around with over the last decade (teens), or true of society at large, it now also means: incredibly or very or totally. Day to day, literally, is used as a kind of emphasis for any statement. And while I get it in terms of it's urban meaning, if you tell me that you literally pissed yourself, or that it's literally raining cats and dogs - I will not be able to concentrate on what you say next because I will be too busy metaphorically pissing myself at the superb imagery you have just provided for me.

And words are fluid not just in meaning, but in their physicality too. Color used to only mean that in the USA. In Australia and the UK it meant nothing more than you'd spelt colour wrong or were American. Now, teachers have to accept this spelling as a valid alternative when they mark essays. In the 1600s when old mate Shakey was at large, aye, was yes. You was thou. Mickle meant much. And I nearly died of shock doing A-level English Lit when Mrs Wilde explained that quaint actually didn't mean, er, quaint, in The Miller's Tale, but was, rather, the way that they spelt cunt in Chaucer's day.

In the last twelve months I've also come to appreciate the mechanics of speech more too as Bette has started weekly speech therapy. Her hearing impairment means that her words can sometimes be unclear and what wasn't an issue when she was a toddler prone to mostly making her needs known via grunts and pointing anyway, is more problematic now she's approaching three with the vocabulary (and attitude of) a (twenty) seven year old. Speech pathology is helping her to understand the shapes and thus the sounds of the words in a way she hasn't before and on the odd occasions Betts lets me join in with her and her bestie's sessions, I'm learning that not only are words the way in which we share and negotiate our reality, they're things that we create not only at a cognitive level but at a biological level too. Just as when we go old school and actually handwrite them down on paper.

That's the thing about words. They are everything. They do everything. They mean everything. Which is why my New Years Resolution is to get writing more. I'm also going to try and use kinder words, ones that show appreciation and respect rather than the frantic instructions and reprimands that I feel mostly litter my everyday communication.

And while I will always LOVE swear words, as Abe is on the precipice of prep, I'll be pulling in my propensity to tell people to piss off and focusing on using the pleases.

I'll also be focusing on what my own words reveal too - because sometimes things pop out of your mouth you didn't even know you thought or wanted until that very moment you breathe life into them. Just a few days ago I was probably as surprised as the person I was talking to when I declared I quite fancied being a social worker - but it doesn't make it any less true - and it's a whole idea that I'll be examining further now it's formed, because I do kind of fancy it.

Rainbow Script

The sketch opens with Zippy peeling a banana... Zippy: " One skin, two skin, three skin, four " George: " Zippy, where is Bungle?" Zippy: " I think Geoffrey is trying to get him up" We see a view of the door and hear Bungle moaning from Behind it. Bungle: " Geoffrey, I can't get it in" Geoffrey: "You managed it last night" Bungle: "I know, let's try it round the other way. Ooooooh, I've got it in" Bungle and Geoffrey enter the studio with Bungle carrying a hammer and peg kit Bungle: " Would you stick this on the shelf, George" George: " I can't reach, you'll have to stick it up yourself, Geoffrey (to camera) " Hello everyone, today we are talking about playing" Bungle: " Playing with each other, Geoffrey?" Geoffrey:" Yes Bungle, do you have a special friend that you like to play with?" George:" Yesterday we played with each other's balls. Are we going to play with our friend's balls today? Bungle: " Yes, and we can play with our twangers as well." Geoffrey (to camera) Have you seen Bungles twanger? Zippy:" Oh I have, I showed him how to pluck with it." Bungle: " It's my plucking instrument." Geoffrey asks the audience if they can pluck like Bungle Zippy:" I can, I'm the best plucker here." George;" And I'm good at banging. My peg's hard isn't it Zippy? Zippy:" Well of course it is, Your peg wouldn't go in if it was soft." Geoffrey;" Let's get back to Bungle's twanger." Bungle (excited) " Oooooh Geoffrey, we could all play with our twangers couldn't we? Let's play the plucking song. Rod and Roger can get their instruments out and Jane has got two lovely Maracas." Singers Rod, Freddy and Jane enter. Freddy:" We could hear you all banging away" Rod: "Banging can be fun." Jane:" Ooooh yes, and I was banging away all last night with Rod and Freddy." Freddy (looking sad) " Yes, but it broke my plucking instrument." Rod (to Jane) " Do you want to blow on my pipe while I'm twanging away?" Jane: " Oh no, I was banging away with Freddy last night. But would you Like to play with my maracas? Zippy; " No, let's just pluck away with our twangers." George:"Yes, it doesn't matter what size our twanger is." Zippy;" I've got a big red one." George: " I've only got a tiny twanger. But it works well and I like to play with it." Geoffrey (to viewers) " Well, have you got your twangers out? And remember, you can bang your balls at the same time. If you haven't got any, ask a friend if you can play with his. Now, let's all play the plucking song." Everyone in studio: " Pluck, pluck, pluck along, we're going to pluck all day."

#Writing #Words #Sayings #Meaning #Opinion