Lostintranslation

Lost
in Translation?

I suppose it’s a natural function of age that makes our
conversations and word usage change from time to time. When
I read that back sentence back it doesn’t make a lot of
sense, but I’ll try to explain.



Last week, my wife and I took a little time off to recharge
our batteries. When I told our youngest son we were going to
be gone and how to call us if he needed, I told him….”your
mother and I are on the lam.”



He replies…”What Lamb?”



“The lam…not the lamb.”



“Who’s lamb? Why do we know that has a lamb?”



I then discovered he had no clue as to what I was talking
about, so I screwed it up further by adding….”Yeah, she’s my
moll and we’re headed out, but we aren’t carrying a gat or a
rod or a heater of any kind.”



He answers…”It’s not cold…why would you need a heater?”



Then the phone went dead for a period of time and then he
finally says…”Dad, are you OK? Is something wrong?”



I started laughing and tried to explain, but I’m afraid it
got lost in the translation and ended up taking longer and
got less funny by the minute. By the time I finished
explaining, I was worn out and wished I hadn’t started the
whole thing in the first place.



It got me to thinking that each generation must have it’s
own slang and application of various words. The word ‘bad’
can mean one thing to one generation and something entirely
different to another. It’s almost like trying to speak a
foreign language. Folks my age have a hard time
understanding nearly anything a teenager might have to say
today.



To complicate matters, think about the differences in the
way men and women speak to each other. Yesterday, my wife
asked me, “Have you done such and such?”.



I immediately got on the defensive and told her that I had
not had time to do anything yet, but I was working on it as
fast as I could. She wanted to know why what she had said
had set me off. I told her it was the way she asked. She
wanted to know what would have been a better way to ask.



I thought about it and said, “Well, if you had phrased it
like this….’Are you going to do such and such’, then it
would have been a lot better.”



“Why?” she asked.



“I don’t know, it just sounds better and doesn’t put me on
the spot.”

Well as you can imagine, we went round and around on this
one. She claims it sounded the same to her, no matter which
way the question was asked. I said that using the word “are”
instead of “have” implied that whatever needed to be done
could still be done. The word ‘have’ was a question with the
implication that it needed to be done already.



Does any of this make any sense? I hope so.



Last night we had dinner with our youngest son again. The
one who didn’t know the difference between lam and lamb. He
agreed with me that the word ‘are’ instead of ‘have’ was
much easier to deal with and wasn’t as threatening.





My lovely wife still could not see the difference and then
comes up with the theory that men don’t like to be
questioned on something they don’t have an answer for. Her
explanation is that using the word ‘are’ gives men a pass
since they can always say…”sure, I plan on doing that today
or tomorrow or whenever I get time.” Using the word, ‘have’
puts men on the spot and narrows the time frame as in, “Have
you taken out the trash?”



Yet?



If she had phrased it as, “are you going to take out the
trash?” A man can easily answer in the affirmative and not
have that guilt hanging over him because he hadn’t gotten to
whatever it is he was supposed to have taken care of.



I’m certain someone has probably done some type of
scientific study on discussions like this. Men don’t like
being placed on the spot and not having a definite answer
for some question. Why is this?



Who knows? It doesn’t seem to bother women; they are
comfortable answering either way the question is posed. Just
for drill I asked my wife….”have you swept the porch?”



She didn’t take the bait and answered…”no, but I will this
afternoon.”



So much for my grand experiment.