Wherein Pearl -- Hark! -- Reminisces

Pearl has, in an effort to distance herself from the sorrow of having discovered her home laptop with its head in the oven, will be referring to herself in the third person for the purposes of this post.

Please know that she is well and resting comfortably, despite the treasonous behavior of her beloved but clearly depressed computer.

Her head is swimming. Is there something she could’ve done?

But why ask ourselves when there are so many options, so many ways to dispose of personal responsibility! Why, just this morning, she was thinking, “I can’t wait until Friday when my iPod will tell me what I can expect from the weekend!”

Because it’s true! It’s reasonably, arguably, possibly true that Friday morning’s playlist, well shuffled and taken aurally, will tell you what is in your immediate future.

Hey Eugene by Pink Martini
Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix
Dirty Harry by Gorillaz
Grace by Jeff Buckley
Silver by Pixies
The Other Side by Morphine*

Colorful, iddin it? What it means, however? Pearl has no idea.

We have time for a quick thought, if you have a moment…

My friend Erin’s grandma wonders where all the jalopies have gone, insists that there are, nowadays, no jalopies.

And outside of the fact that she lives in one of the finer, wealthier areas of Chicago and a jalopy would be as out of place there as a couple of dogs humping at a polo match, I don’t know that anyone calls them “jalopies” anymore…

Ergot, Erin’s grandma is right: there are no jalopies.

Junkers? Hoopdies? Beaters with Heaters? We have plenty of those, we’ve just run out of jalopies.

The world of words marches on.

What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here?

Grandma had a sister-in-law whose nickname growing up was “Puss” because she was such a pretty little girl. “A pretty face, just like a little cat,” Grandma said.

But now? Calling someone "Puss"? Them’s fightin’ words.

My grandmother used to serve us “nectar”, aka “fruit juice”. She was also known to have “warshed” the car (rather than “washing” it) and say thing like “oh, for land’s sake” and “might as well, can’t dance”.

She also served “dinner” at lunchtime and “supper” at, well, what we now call “dinner”.

It gets very confusing. I have diagram I could show you later.

Hark! So many words we no longer say. So many meanings that have changed since their initial use. So much is specific to a generation that then goes away with them, once that generation is gone.

And that’s a shame, because if there’s one thing I could use nowadays would be a nice cool glass of Grandma's nectar.


* Are you sure you’re getting enough dark, honkin’ baritone sax solos in your life? You’re not?! Don’t forget to take a listen to “The Other Side”. Mark Sandman of Morphine died several years ago while touring in Europe (which is why I – ahem – never tour Europe) but the music is timeless.