By Jim Hagarty
1991
I was trying to figure out a Personal Tax Credit Return form from Revenue Canada the other day, when I came across this heading:
Self-contained domestic establishment.
I breezed by it like a preoccupied motorist past a road sign but when I took a wrong turn or two a few lines down the page, I had to back up and have another look.
Self-contained domestic establishment.
“What the heck is that?” I muttered to myself.
An explanatory note – note No. 9 out of a list of 10 explanatory notes – said that a self-contained domestic establishment “means the dwelling house, apartment or similar place where you sleep and eat.”
A light went on.
Home.
A self-contained domestic establishment is a home.
Now, pardon my insubordination, but what was wrong with the word home? Is there anyone around who doesn’t know what a home is? Can it be possible to confuse home with something else? At the end of the day, for example, when you tell your fellow workers, “Well, I think I’ll go home, now,” do they wonder what you’re talking about?
If you say “the home”, then you might be onto confusing ground (the nursing home or the sanatorium, perhaps). But home is home. It’s where you most often sleep and eat. And watch The Flintstones on TV.
But for some smart soul or committee of smart souls in Ottawa, the word home just won’t do anymore. Those four little letters are as outdated as lamplighters. Time for something new. Something with, say, 34 letters in it.
And so it starts. Tucked away on some little government form. Then in sporadic use in everyday language. And finally, in the dictionaries and stylebooks of newspapers which will instruct their reporters to use “self-contained domestic establishment” instead of the archaic “home.”
That’s fine with me.
Just don’t expect me to buy any frilly wall hangings with drawings of fireplaces and rocking chairs and the words, “Self-Contained Domestic Establishment Sweet Self-Contained Domestic Establishment” scrawled in calligraphy across the top.
And when they change that old classic country song to “Self-contained domestic establishment, self-contained domestic establishment on the range, where the deer and the antelope play …”
That’s when I’m moving to Russia.
