Category: anti-humor

Eradicating Boredom, Losing Creativity: The Double-Edged Sword of Digital Distraction

RilalyLeave a comment

“I’ll never be bored again!” I said the day I purchased my first smartphone. I said that in reference to one of the very few games we play that has no winners: the waiting game. With a smartphone in hand, I thought I could finally resolve one of my biggest complaints about life: waiting.

“We’re not going to live forever,” we complain when someone is involved in the life and death struggles of a grocery store price check. Most of us don’t take out our life expectancy calculator to figure out how long we’re going to live, or to calculate how much of our lives we’ve wasted waiting in line, but we all love sharing that snarky joke about the guy complaining to the clerk that the price tag said asparagus cost $3.47 as opposed to the register’s reading of $3.97.

We’re all waiting for something, all the time, but what makes us angrier, waiting for something to happen, or doing nothing for long stretches of time? We’ve all experienced our frustrations inch their way over into anger, then boil over into rage, and we’ve all experienced that sense of helplessness when it happens to us. With a smartphone in hand, I correctly predicted that I could avoid falling into that trap of claustrophobic silence and inactivity by filling it with something, something to do with my hands, and something is always better than nothing in the waiting game.

Promptness is About Respect

The waiting game is not selective or discriminatory. Everyone from the most anonymous person on the planet to the most powerful has to wait for something, but there’s waiting and then there’s waiting. The waiting game is all about power and the lack thereof. When we’re stuck in line, at a restaurant, waiting for a seat, we experience a sense of powerlessness. We’re so accustomed to having power over our own life, as adults, that when we find out the wait time for that restaurant is forty-five minutes, we exert that power by walking away. When we find out every decent restaurant in town has a thirty-to-forty-five minute waiting time that sense of frustration sets in, and we eat at home. When someone we love leaves us sitting in that restaurant for a half an hour to forty-five minutes a sense of helplessness creeps in when we realize that we’ve accidentally put ourselves in a position of dependence yet again.

I don’t know if everyone feels this way, but I replay a Madonna quote in my head. “If you have to count on others for a good time, you’re not doing it right.” When I’m sitting in a restaurant with patrons passing me, looking at the vacant side of my table, I realize I’m counting on the wrong people in life, the narcissistic, irresponsible, and disrespectful people I count on for an enjoyable lunch. If they leave us there long enough, by ourselves, we’ll start to dream up all sorts of motives and agendas for their tardiness. That frustration can lead to anger and a level of teeth gritting and grinding that damages the expensive and painful dental work the impatient we’ve had done. 

I know that the search for what could tip me over into some form of mental illness is over when I am on the other end of the waiting game, and I eventually hear, “What is the big deal, I was only a couple minutes late, and I had to …” They usually fill that void with utter nonsense that we cannot disprove, so we just let it go. 

Life happens when we least expect it sometimes, and sometimes we’re going to be late. If we respect the other person, we call, text, or email us to inform them we’re going to be late, but that would be respectful on our part. That’s really what we’re talking about here, the respect or lack thereof, on their part. If we respect our employer, we show up on time. If we enjoy the company of someone we’re dating, we show up on time, or early. It’s about respect, the lack thereof, and narcissism. And when they show us this lack of respect, quality friendships can be tainted and temporarily damaged, and dissociations with associates end what could’ve become a friendship. We overreact to such slights, and we know it, but it all boils down to the fact promptness is all about respect.

The Eradication of Boredom

When we’re immersed in the maddening waiting game, the mosquito paradox comes to mind. Anyone who has ever had a beautiful day at the park ruined by a scourge of mosquitoes has asked why scientists don’t find some way to bioengineer an eradication of that relatively useless species? Biologists, with a specialty in mosquitoes, provide arguments for why we shouldn’t, but when we’re swatting, slapping, and running from the scourge, we develop seven counter arguments to every one of theirs. The only vague but true answer we’ll accept is “Anytime we mess with nature, there will be consequences.” We’ve all heard that in relation to the mosquito, but what about waiting and the resultant boredom? Boredom is a naturally occurring event. What could possibly be the consequences of eradicating boredom? We’re not talking about that simple, “I don’t know what to do to pass the time” boredom. We’re talking about levels of boredom that takes us to the edge of an abyss that stares back at us, until it roars to the surface and frightens everyone around us.

Some of us loathe the boredom inherent in the waiting game so much that it whispers some scary things about us to us, but when it’s all over, it dawns on us that something happens to us when we spend too much time in claustrophobic silence with nothing to do but think.

How many useless, pointless thoughts have we had in such moments? We flush most of those thoughts out of our mind after it’s over, as we will with that which our body cannot use, but some thoughts collect, mate, and mutate into ideas that we can use. How many of our more meaningful, somewhat productive thoughts had hundreds of useless, pointless parents conjugating during the waiting game? 

***

The child and I often talk a lot about how relatively boring things were when I was a kid. This involves me recalling for him what we did for fun, and how we thought those things were so much fun at the time. “We had to do these things,” I say when I see his face crinkle up, “because we were all so bored.” These complaints could be generational, as I often hear the previous generation describe their youth as “Such an incredible time to be a kid,” and they were raised on farms! I’ve been on farms, trapped there for huge chunks of my youth, and the only thing I found incredible about it was how incredibly boring it was. It takes a creative mind, more creative than mine, to believe that being raised on a farm is an “incredible” time.

“It’s all about perspective,” they say, and they’re right. If we don’t know any better, skipping stones in a pond and fishing can be a lot of fun. We rode our bikes around the block a gazillion times, and we thought that was an absolute blast, and then we played every game that involved a ball, but they all seem comparatively boring when compared to the things kids can do now. We could argue all day about the comparisons, but they do have better things to fill the empty spaces. Yet, what happened to us as a result of all those empty spaces, and what happens to them as a result of mostly being devoid of any?

How much of our youth did we spend sitting in chairs, looking out windows, waiting for something to happen? Some of us did something, anything, to pass the time until the event we were waiting for could happen, but there were other times when we just had to sit and wait. We’d sit in those chairs and think up useless and pointless crap that ended up being nothing more than useless and pointless crap, but how many bountiful farm fields require tons of useless and pointless crap per acre? 

We have cellphones and smartphones now. That’s our power. That’s how we eradicate boredom. “4.88 billion, or 60.42%, of the world population have cellphones, and the number [was] expected to reach 7.12 billion by the end of 2024. 276.14 million or 81.6% of Americans have cell phones.” We don’t ever have to be bored again. 

We have game consoles. “The Pew Research Center reported in 2008 that 97% of youths ages 12 to 17 played some type of video game, and that two-thirds of them played action and adventure games that tend to contain violent content.” These kids may never have to face the kind of boredom I did as a kid. We didn’t even have an Atari 2600 in our home when just about every kid we knew did, and it wasn’t because our dad wanted to prevent us from becoming gamers. He was just too cheap. So, we were forced to do nothing for long stretches of time.

When you’re as bored as we were, the mind provides the only playground. “Is there something on TV?” There never is, and I don’t care how many channels, streaming services, apps, and websites we have, an overwhelming amount of programming is just plain boring to kids. We could go out and play, but when you’re from a locale of unpredictable climates, you learn that that is not possible for large chunks of the year. The only thing we can do, when we’re that bored, is think about things to do. I invented things to do to pass the time, but they could get a little boring too.

Filling the Empty Spaces 

“You’re weird,” is something I’ve heard my whole life. I’ve also heard, “I’ve met some really weird fellas in my time, but you take the cake,” more than a few times. That’s what I did when I ran out of things to do. I sat around and got weird. Your first thought might be, “Well, I don’t want to be weird, and I don’t want anyone thinking my kid is weird either.” Understandable, but what is weird? Weird is different, it’s having divergent thoughts that no one has considered before, until they grew as bored as we did. Weird is rarely something that happens overnight. It takes decades of boredom, and it takes a rewind button of the mind, replaying the same thoughts over and over, until we’ve looked at the same situation so many different ways, on so many different days that we’ve developed some weird ideas and abnormal thoughts about people, places and things around us. This is what happens when we stare out windows too long, looking at nothing, wondering how the world might look different if it was weird, strange, or just plain different. It’s what happens when someone lives too long in the mind, and their peeps start worrying that they’re not doing it right. 

Some weird, strange, and just plain different thoughts led us to think about the difference between success and failure. Success is a short-term game that will mean nothing tomorrow if you’re not able to back it up, so you better enjoy it while it lasts, because if there’s one thing we know about success, it has a million parents and failure is an orphan. We also realize that, in those dark, quiet moments we spend alone, looking out the car window on the drive home, that failure does define us. Athletes and business people say, “Don’t let failure define you,” but it defines us. Some remember those moments, and some will never forget, but what we do shortly after failing will define us too. The thing that plagues us is, “Was that moment of failure an irreversible blemish?” and when we’re left staring out the window at nothing, it can feel like it is. Some will never forget, and we know who they are, because they always remind us who they are, but most forget. As any trained public speaker will inform us, an overwhelming number of people will forgive, forget, and dismiss errors. Most people aren’t paying near as much attention as we think, and most people aren’t dying to see others commit errors. When we’re left alone for long chunks of time, replaying moments over and over, we can make the mistake of thinking it’s the opposite. 

“Reach for the stars,” they say. “Become the next Albert Einstein, Vincent van Gogh, Isaac Newton, and Leonardo da Vinci, fill your empty spaces, and reshape your world.” It’s great advice, and we think about how we should try to be better today than we were yesterday, and we shouldn’t spend those dark, quiet moments obsessing about trivial notions we consider our limitations. As we sort through those famous names, we ask how bored were they, when they were kids? Those guys had nothing to do either, when they were kids. They didn’t have movies, TV, devices, or consoles to occupy their time. As boring as it could be to be a kid in our generation, we can only imagine those previous generations were just itching with boredom back in their day, and they were so bored that they dreamed up some things that laid the foundation for everything we find interesting now. We can imagine that most dismissed them as dreamers and daydreamers that wouldn’t amount to much, and they ended up conjugating all of those pointless and useless thoughts into something that ended up reshaping our world.    

No matter how much we daydream, or dream up interesting thoughts, most of us will never actually reach those stars. Yet, something happens to us when we’re so bored that we think up weird and interesting thoughts that will never amount to anything. We accidentally, incidentally, or just by the natural course of filling empty spaces become more interesting. Thinking so much that we think too much could lead us to divergent thoughts that some people find so weird, strange and just plain different, but that can lead them to ask us about matters that they consider trivial, relatively unimportant, to important. Our unique perspective often attracts people to us, and it could lead us to have more friends, which could be one of the primary reasons we should consider inserting more boredom into our kids’ lives. Our kids might not know who they are, or who they could be, if they find artificial ways to avoid ever sitting in front of a window with nothing to do but think about everything. Even if they never make it above the lower-to-middle stations in life, they might learn how to make life more interesting, and they might accidentally figure out how to enjoy their lives better, and in the process of being so bored, they might learn how to become happier, more interesting people. 

DDTY: Don’t Do This Yourself

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2020 was a huge year in the DIY (Do-it-Yourself) industry. We spent so much time inside, isolated, that we spent record amounts on DIY tools and accessories to accommodate what we thought might be our new reality. We spent so much time inside, isolated, that people who rarely used a tool were now purchasing power tools. Faucets, kitchen cabinets, and toilets were flying off the shelves. Home Depot saw a 20% increase in net sales, and Lowe’s saw a 24.2% increase. We spent record amounts on DIY tools and accessories to accommodate what we thought might be our new reality.

I thought it might be a revolution in individual empowerment, but the number one answer given to pollsters on this subject was “[I] finally having the time for it.” Translation, I always knew how to do this stuff, I just never had time for it before. The numbers reflect that, as DIY industry numbers have plummeted since 2020 back to normal, but those of us who didn’t know what we were doing before COVID, but learned it within, took our first bite of that apple and found the flavor empowering. We found fixing things ourselves less intimidating after seeing an oaf with a mustache on YouTube explain that insulating our attic and changing our garbage disposal can be accomplished in ten easy steps. 

Bob Peters didn’t know anything about plumbing, HVACs, appliances, or anything else in his home that required fixing. Anytime he had a problem, he just called an expert. Mr. Peters would’ve loved to fix his belongings in the beginning, but he never learned how to do it. His dad was probably less informed and less experienced in fixing things that he was, and Bob spent the first twenty years of his adulthood living in apartments. After purchasing his own home, Bob knew he was physically capable of fixing his fixables, but two minutes after opening these things up, he felt overwhelmed by the idea that an idiot like him could do it.

“One huge part of intelligence,” Bob often joked to friends and family who encouraged him to fix these things himself, “is knowing your limitations.”

Bob Peters wasn’t an idiot. He worked hard, and his hard-earned expertise, in his arena, was valued and well-compensated. He didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to Do-It-Yourself (DIY). During COVID, the individuals weren’t as overwhelmed as the certified, licensed experts. The wait times were insane.

“I understand your frustration, but if you knew what we were up against, you would understand.” The resultant desperation led Bob to discover the oafs with mustaches on YouTube. These oafs were licensed plumbers, certified HVAC guys, and former and current employees at the companies that manufactured the appliances Bob owned. They were experts in their field hoping to make some side money in the YouTube universe. They taught Bob that he no longer needed Mike the plumber, Leo the HVAC guy, and Craig the fix-it-guy to fix everything in his home. He could do some of this himself. The idea that an unlicensed, uncertified individual could fix the small things in his home “by following these steps” was a revelation to Bob Peters, and the only question left for him was how far do I take this? 

We’re not licensed plumbers, yet we can fix some of the majors, and most of the minors, in a little under an hour with the assistance of the ideal YouTuber. Bob even found that messing with electricity isn’t as scary as he thought it was. He maintained a healthy respect for electricity, but that healthy respect was a healthy fear prior to an oaf with a mustache informing him that as long as he followed “these necessary steps,” the electrical world wasn’t as foreign and scary as he thought it was.

The problem for Bob was that as healthy as his home, and now his car, were now through DIY maintenance, he could never maintain his own health. “How far do I take this?” he asked himself when he experienced yet another setback, a level of pain that suggested he was going to have to endure yet another emergency room visit. 

Bob’s life devolved to seemingly endless trips to doctor’s offices, rushes to emergency rooms, and some hospital stays. The routine was so demoralizing, painful, and tedious that in the midst of Nurse Nancy attending to him yet again, he said, “I just have this feeling that this is my life now.”

Those employed in health-related institutions gain knowledge, wisdom, and a level of expertise from books, professors, and personal experience, but they are methodical sorts who can leave a fella waiting, in pain, for thirty-to-forty minutes. I know what you’re thinking, a thirty-to-forty wait isn’t such a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, but when you’re in excruciating pain, each click of the minute hand feels endless. These doctors and nurses further complicated Bob’s life with all of their monitoring. They suggest that they need to keep us, sometimes overnight, to monitor the effects of our medicinal and procedural treatments. Bob Peters just got sick of the whole shebang, and when he experienced yet another flair up, he wondered “How far can I take this DIY stuff?”

He’d been through the process of having a catheter inserted into his nether region so many times that he joked, “I could probably do this myself at this point” to Nurse Nancy the last time she helped him through the painful procedure. He repeated that joke, in his head, as he waited in the hospital room that last visit, as they monitored his levels. He then repeated that joke to his friends and family when they asked how his last visit went, and he ended up repeating that joke so often that when he experienced another flair up, he began seriously contemplating it. Even though his friends said, “You’re not seriously considering this are you?” He said no, and he meant it, but now that he was in need yet again, and he thought about going through all the typical procedures again, he began seriously considering it. 

The beauty of YouTube is that they list for us the bullet points of most DIY projects. Most viewers at home were so uninformed we didn’t even know there were bullet points and finding them proved an empowering revelation. The one caveat that experts list for anyone considering YouTube-style DIY fixes is that oafs with mustaches often don’t cover variables well. 

Bob came to our attention after experiencing just such a variable. He consulted a YouTube video that instructed him how he could insert a catheter from the comfort of his own home. The oaf with a mustache covered the basics, the principles behind it, and a number of caveats and variables, but he neglected to cover whatever led to Bob experiencing what he called “a warm rush of liquid” that occurred shortly after he inserted the catheter. 

“I didn’t hear a pop,” Bob told Nurse Nancy, “But that warm rush of liquid concerned me, and I’ve been urinating blood since. And, it ain’t stopping.” Although he managed to drive himself to the emergency room, Bob characterized his pain as a ten on the pain scale. “I always characterize the pain I feel as a ten, don’t we all, but the pain I’m experiencing right now gives me new perspective. I’m going to go ahead and edit all those previous pains as sevens now.”

Fearing the worst, Bob suggested that Nurse Nancy have the doctor, “Check to see if I punctured one of my testicles.” Those in charge of making preliminary guesses, guessed that Bob didn’t do anything as drastic as that, and he probably scratched something or popped a boil of some sort, but they knew that without further analysis, the possibilities were endless.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the details of this furthered analysis, but suffice it to say that Bob found an answer to the question, “How far do we take this?” As a relatively new advocate for Doing-It-Yourself, Bob probably sounded like an evangelist on feelings of empowerment inherent in being able to fix your own fixables. Even after his episode, he would stand behind the DIY sword and shield, but he would encourage those of us who ask ourselves “How far do we take this?” to ask one crucial question: “What’s the penalty for error?”  

Bob would probably add that even in the age of oafs with mustaches on YouTube, AI, and the resultant sense of individual empowerment inherent in fixing it yourself that there is still, at this point in human history, as of yet devoid of superhumans melding with AI, a need to avoid traveling in areas we don’t belong. As much as the not-easily-intimidated crowd hate to admit it, there is still a need for knowledge and expertise in certain arenas. There is still a need for professional analysis, waiting on those with firsthand knowledge, experience, aptitude, and all of that monitoring for the effects of all of the above. What’s the penalty for incorrectly installing a garbage disposal? What are the penalties for making errors in trying to fix an HVAC, their electricity, or their plumbing? “Go ahead and pay attention to all those ‘Don’t try this at home’ disclaimers that oafs with mustaches list on their YouTube videos before they start in,” Bob might add, “because some drains are more intricate, delicate, and indispensable than others.”

The Chilly Bin

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“Chilly bin,” an actress in a New Zealand show called Wellington Paranormal said. What’s a chilly bin? It was obvious, in the scene, that a cooler, a portable ice chest, or whatever you call it in your region was the product of her concern. Colloquialisms, like this one, fascinate me. I’ve even been informed that I use some colloquialisms, we all do, without knowing it. We use terminology, phrases, and various descriptors that our ancestors, family, and friends do, and we absorb all this from those in their country, region, and locale. My cousin uses some different terms and phrases, and everyone around him does too. They also have a subtle, almost imperceptible drawl, and they overemphasize their ‘R’s’ in a manner that catches the ear. They live an hour and a half from me.     The modern version of the portable ice chest made its first relatively wide-scale appearance around 1951, which means the terms cooler and chilly bin weren’t derived from old world languages. Chilly bin also isn’t a result of a creole, a pidgin, or any other linguistic quirk with a characteristic mixing of parent languages typically born in a culture of multilingual settings. The term chilly bin was born and bred in New Zealand. So, when and why did New Zealanders (AKA Kiwis) begin calling the portable ice chest the chilly bin? A short but decent search of the term chilly bin suggests there is no person or event responsible for the term, and there is no point of origin or any identifiable historical trails for the term. “It’s just Kiwis being Kiwis,” some sources say. One explanation for this lack of explanation is that sometimes Kiwis simply enjoy “adding a touch of Kiwi personality to the English language, making it distinct and memorable.” 
Australians (Aussies) call the portable ice chest an ‘esky’, but that makes more sense because they derive that term from a famous brand of coolers sold in Australia. Americans call tissues Kleenex, gelatin is Jell-O, toaster pastries are Pop-Tarts and Aussies call the portable ice chest an esky. The term chilly bin makes no sense, in that vein, because there hasn’t been a chilly bin brand sold there until a recent effort to start one. 
How do linguistic quirks, specific to a locale, start? How do they survive the “Isn’t it called a cooler?” corrections? “Yes, but that’s not what we call it here,” I imagine fathers telling their children. “But we’re the only ones who call it that,” I imagine the kids replying. The population of New Zealand stands at just over five million, so I can only guess that people who are proud of their heritage and traditions, big and small, have a tough time sustaining them against the language found in movies, TV, and the internet. Though I know nothing about New Zealand, and I’ve never met a Kiwi, I have to imagine that younger people, though proud of their heritage and traditions, refuse to use the term chilly bin, because it sounds so local, yokel.  

It’s All Relative to Relatives

I have a cousin who moved from the Midwest to the Southern part of the United States. Our family is from a region of the Midwest that has no discernible accent, and this cousin spent his entire childhood, the formative years, in our locale, until his family moved south in his early teens. When we visited him, decades later, we found that he switched languages. I didn’t understand that as a young kid, so I asked him about it. He said something about how he didn’t intend to switch, but he picked it up as a result of linguistic osmosis.  “It sounds like everyone down here made the switch,” my brother said. “They all speak with an accent.”  Our cousin overheard this and joked, “Son, down here, you’re the one with the accent.”
“Really?” I said. “Because, if you watch TV and movies, everyone talks like us?” My innocent comment basically asked him why he didn’t see the error of his ways and switch back to our accent-free dialect. My naïve, uninformed point was that he should’ve recognized, at some point, that he wasn’t speaking in “the normal manner” the rest of us in our shared English-speaking country did.
Manufacturers make a concerted effort to localize their products for consumers, and online stores often do the same. If New Zealand comprises roughly five million, manufacturers likely do not spend too much time and effort regionalizing their products to accommodate their terminology. Kiwis surely recognize the more worldly terms “cooler,” “portable cooler,” or “ice chest,” but the maintain their terminology among one another. I could see the term chilly bin existing in an inclusive world that involved New Zealanders speaking among one another, but I would think that involving themselves in the world wide web would lead them to recognize that they’re holding onto the term in some kind of quant Kiwi manner that should eventually weed itself out among those who don’t want to ascribe to their quaint Kiwi traditions.     Americans have slang terms, the French do, and the Brits do. We all have slang terms that we use growing up, and isn’t it fascinating how they transcend generations? What Americans call a popsicle, the Brits call an ice lolly. Americans refer to the “rising chair” as an elevator, and the Brits call it a lift. Due to the fact that the Brits used to own America, the inclination might be that Britian should own these linguistic levers, but America tends to dominate the world in media, technology, and international business. When we talk about media, we’re including TV shows and movies, and since American entertainment is more popular worldwide, their lexicon tends to dominate. Most countries formerly owned by the Brits (Australia and New Zealand in particular) adopted their slang and lexicon, but the Americas branched off and refused to use British slang in an apparent effort to further their revolutionary quest for total freedom, but did the British then refuse to adopt the American lexicon, because they refuse to speak the language of their refuse? Or are dialects and colloquialisms a natural course of insular language/lexicons among people?  Order fish and chips in Britian, and you’ll receive a plate of fish and fries. Some suggest that most Brits do not call French Fries chips when they order it as a standalone, as various American fast-food chains have forced the term French Fries into the British vocabulary, but the term fish and chips continued in Britain when it’s ordered as a meal. Brits call chips, or potato chips in America, crisps. Some sites suggest that the Brits see the fried bits of potato Americans know as French Fries as those that were chipped off a potato, i.e. each fry was chipped off a potato. The actual origin of the French Fry may have started in 1629, in the country of Chile, or later in Spain, but the Belgians and French have had a long dispute that the French Fry developed in their country. Regardless, we can only guess that the Brits developed the term chips, because they are averse to referring to anything with a French designation. The term fish and chips hold true for Aussies, the Irish, and Kiwis.

The Loo 

In my locale, we’ve loaded the American lexicon with contractions. ‘Fyouwanto’ is a common phrase in certain regions of America that contracts the words if you want to. Brits say, ‘Innit’ for isn’t it, as in, “Cold day today, innit?” My very young son once noted that Americans say, “I’m headed to the restroom” if they’re in a restaurant and “I’m going to the bathroom” if they’re at home. Brits say, “I’m headed to the loo” regardless where they’re at. I’ll admit here that I always thought they were saying, the Louvre. Now, I know the Louvre, the art museum in Paris, is pronounced “The Loov-rah,” but when I hear the Brits and Americans refer to that museum, they say, “The Loov.” Seeing as how Brits often leave off the last syllable of many of the words they say, I thought “the loo” was a tongue-in-cheek shot to the French that they developed to conflate the waste removal room with one of France’s most treasured tourist destinations. 
As with most commonly and casually used terms, “the loo” has uncertain origins. As such, we can only derive possibilities and theories. One theory has it that the loo was derived from the French term for water: l’eau. “This theory suggests that the word “loo” was originally used to refer to a water closet or a room with water facilities, which eventually came to be associated with toilets. Another theory is that the term “loo” originated from the cry of “gardyloo” used by medieval French-speaking servants in Scotland before throwing their waste matter out of the window. Over time, the theory states, the cry of “gardyloo” may have been shortened to “loo” and used to refer to the location where waste matter was disposed.” Gardyloo basically means “guard yourself for the water/waste,” or “watch out for the waste matter that I’m about to throw out the window here.” At some point, so goes the theory, the Brits just shortened it to “the loo”. 

Linguistic Laughter

When my Southern cousin eventually returned to the Midwest, he said, “I was almost afraid to talk, because every time I opened my mouth, someone started giggling.” Our laughter is an unfortunate, involuntary, and almost reflexive reaction to anyone who uses different terms, speaks with regional dialects, or has a specific drawl or accent. We laugh based on the ‘I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry’ confusion. On my trip to the South, I managed to get the shock and awe giggling out of my system, but there was something about his drawl, his colloquialisms, and his slang, idioms, and patois that still had us all looking at each other, pumping our eyebrows, and giggling, because it was one of those “I’m sorry, I know it’s rude, but I can’t stop laughing” moments.  If you’ve ever been on the other end of the laughter, you know we all have regional dialects, accents, and ways of saying things that are regional and local. The worst thing I ever heard was “You’re not from here are you?” a cashier asked me. “You know how I can tell? You don’t have an accent.” My initial thought was that I didn’t have her accent. I’ve since learned that in my region of the country, we don’t have any accent. We might be the section of the country with the least amount of accent, and little in the way of regional dialect. I don’t write that to gloat, as I think accents, dialects, and drawls are colorful, and my region of the country might lack those more than any other. Yet, we do have various colloquialisms and slang terms. It’s all relative, but when we’re young, and we have no idea that there is another way to say what we’ve said our whole life, we don’t understand it when someone says something different or they say it a different way, and it strikes us as funny. Homer Simpson summed this up with his typical brilliance saying, “He’s talking funny-talk,” after hearing Herschel Krusofsky (AKA Krusty the Clown) pray in Hebrew.