Precise Language

Smart people. What a drag.

Inevitably some of the more insightful people I´ve had the uncomfortable pleasure of knowing have been teachers. Teachers of English or English teachers as they would offhandedly point out.

2 of them former alcoholics recovering by taking a swig from the cheap bourbon bottle under their desk. One of them, the older one, was a man of true class and weight. Burdened by the weight of elitist higher education beyond what most people would see neccesary and uncovering the vast expanses of knowledge hiding in "the epistemological effects of the Shor algorithm in post-modernist literature". Relevance becomes a beautifully relative term. The meaning of it becomes as apt at describing current merit in the conversation at hand as when you describe a cat by calling it a dog.

One of them I had as a young pup in high school. He practiced wolfing - standing at his classroom door and greeting every student by name, handshake, or pat on the back as appropriate according to their rank and where they had taken a piss earlier that morning. Girls could ask questions. Men were expected to know and avoid all sorts of foolishness. He recommended a book to me - Aztec - and with a grin masking the cavernous eye sockets whispered: it has loads of sex in it.

One of the had a long confucian beard. He was a fan of the teachings of Lao and focused his chi around his rotund belly. A physical and spirtual center of mass I always figured. He was a gentle soul dominated by his wife who would at once scream in outrage at the collection of dead white men that "great" literature had become while at the same time lamenting that there were truly no great female writers because they were grappled by fear of success. Very Coach Carter-esque.

One of them was young-ish. He was older than he liked admitting to himself and though he was personable and relatable and owned AK47s he was always the more subtle of most of them. He would adopt the surly smarter-than-thou asshole tone described by Penguin Book group when discussing elementary prose with primal minds. We have a word for them in Mexico - fresas. Strawberries literally translated. They speak of that sweet and sometimes slightly sour taste they give off, white on the inside for purity, not very filling either in taste or in consistency. Usually a little too bland and often too simple to stand alone (except when the ulterior motif of sex helps draw the situation out). The girls of course swooned. He would turn, look at me at my friends and share a shameless laugh. Some of us were in the secret.

One of them taught me how to light a cigarrette. Properly.

The last one was a young and charismatic woman who had had aspirations of becoming an oceanologist. A decision made before she had ever seen the ocean. This is the kind of logic even Mentats cant fight. She had a soft giggle and a manner of speaking that told you of fantasies rolling around in her head of french maids turned mistresses and an appreciation for the ironic Not! jokes. She named her daughter a possibility and her son a term of endearment.

These are my teachers. I learned very little grammar, I cannot pick apart a sentence and categorize individual words within it. They taught me just enough vocabulary to surpass the average citizen. They told me to read and analyze and grab at straws in order to make a paper that 5 years from now may seem little more than a nonsensical string of words.

English savvy?