Okay, it’s time I took this column to a whole new level
I have a few questions to which l would dearly like some answers because I fall asleep every night troubled by these things.
To begin with, why is everyone always bringing something to the table nowadays? And why do we care so much about what the other guy brings to the table? Why do we toss him overboard if he doesn’t bring much to the table? Where is this table, anyway? Oh, for the simple life on the farm. Mom brought it all to the table; we pulled up our chairs and ate it.
And further to that theme, why are we all taunting each other to “Bring it on!”? Are we nuts? Most of the time, I wish people would “Take it away!” and usually have no desire for them to bring it on. There are too many people bringing too many things on, as far as l’m concerned.
Why is it, today, that when someone has no intention of doing something, that person will say, “Ya, I’ll get right on that?” What they mean is, they will not be getting right on that any time soon. Actually, never. Not to sound like I grew up down the road from Abraham Lincoln and walked with him 20 miles through the bush to school every day, but when l was a kid, if I didn’t get right on that, somebody usually got right on me. Then, my reaction was to get right on that.
When will we ever stop taking everything to the next level or a whole new level? Is the level we’re on never enough? And don’t we realize that when we get to the next level, there will simply be another new level to take things to after that? I thought being on the level was a good thing. It meant you weren’t rolling downhill. Character-wise, it meant you were one honest hombre. But now, life is just a series of new levels to be taken to. I wish we were level-headed enough to simply stay on the level we’re on, once things have levelled out.
When Abe and I were young, if we said to each other, “Good luck with that,” we honestly meant we hoped the other guy succeeded at whatever challenge he was up against. Now, the person who utters this expression is not wishing you luck at all, but telling you that you haven’t a hope of accomplishing your goal, and they’re kind of glad you won’t. So why don’t they say, “Bad luck with that!?” In the same vein is, “Yeh, like that’s going to happen!” (Clue: It’s not going to happen.)
Here are a few other puzzlers. “Bang, done!” What? “Done and done!” If something is done, can it be done again? “Not a problem.” What happened to, “No problem?”
And why, oh why, is everyone trying so hard to “get ‘er done?” I remember when teams used to lose hockey games. Now, they just don’t get ’er done. Maybe they forgot to say, before the game, “We can do this.” Or the captain failed to tell them, “We’re good to go.”
But I have got to be honest with you. I miss the days when things were “great”, “terrific”, “good”, “wonderful”. Now everything’s just “sweeeet!!!” and the sound of that word is making me sour.
All I can say is, “Enough!”
“Already.”
©2004 Jim Hagarty
