Trivial Language
The brain is weird. And it has a very big job to do. On the whole, my brain does a
decent job at keeping me alive. But it’s not so great at prioritizing what activities would
make that life worthwhile. That’s why someday, when I meet St. Peter at the pearly
gates, and he asks me if I served my neighbor or helped the poor? I’ll have to respond
that, “No, but I almost finished a 200,000-stitch cross-stitch project.”
Judging by what’s out there on social media, I’m not alone in this. I think humans
are hard-wired to zero in on the pointless, at the cost of the essential. We literally start
trying to communicate the instant we are born by crying loudly in an effort to tell the
world, “I’m hungry! I’m cold! I’m confused! And “Put me back!” These may be some of
the most relevant and honest things we will ever say in our lives. By the time we get to
the point where we can be understood by others, our brains have given up on
practicality. For example, what most toddlers can NOT say is, “Grandma or Grandpa”
despite thousands of repetitions, but they CAN say with great fluency any number of
four-letter words as a result of an unfortunate one-time exposure to Uncle Bob who will
not be invited back any time soon.
As far as I can see, the compulsion to embrace the most useless words never
leaves us. I once had a job helping adults with severe disabilities. Each day they would
spend time at different stations either learning skills or making things to sell at their
homes. One day I was supervising the coloring table. The pages they were working on
were super basic, A is for Apple, B is for Ball etc. All good until we came to X. X was not
for X-ray, or Xylophone or even eXit. To my delight, X was for Xiphias Gladius. I know
(because I went home and looked it up) that a Xiphias Gladius is a type of swordfish.
This became the grand hurrah of the coloring pages forever afterwards. I couldn’t let it
go, probably because I was bored out of my mind with “Z is for Zebra.” which, now that I
think about it, is also super useless information under the circumstances. The people at
that table may not have known how to write their name or how to count to three, or use
a spoon, but I made darn sure they wouldn’t go through life without recognizing a
Xiphias Gladius when they saw one!
My husband likes languages, so he’s especially prone to getting caught in the
trivialities. He once taught the story of Noah and the Ark to a Sunday school class of 11-
year-olds. There are many wonderful and inspiring lessons that can be drawn from that
story. And I sure hope the kids learned those lessons at home, because what they got
from Dave was the word, antidiluvian (meaning: from before the flood). With luck, that
might be useful as much as once in their lives on a trivia night sometime.
Then there was the time I taught English as a second language to adult Spanish
speakers. I really tried to teach them useful conversational English, but the only thing
I’m 100% sure I taught them was the phrase, “couch potato.” I didn’t mean to teach
them this, it just sort of slipped out one day and one of the younger guys thought it was
the greatest expression ever and used it about 10 times in five minutes. This triggered
the other guys to tease each other about being couch potatoes which made several of
the women comment on their husband’s potato like qualities, and class went downhill
from there.
Oh well. It’s all good practice, right? And my students could take comfort in the
fact that the few things I can say in Spanish, are a good deal less useful than being able
to say couch potato in English. Happily, humans continue to learn throughout their
whole lives, so there’s still hope. To date, I haven’t wasted any brain cells on learning
passwords or important birthdays, but now I can say, “There’s a cow in the house!” in
French. Maybe someday I’ll learn how to say, “Pass the pastries.” When it comes to
French, I really can’t think of anything more important to say than that.
decent job at keeping me alive. But it’s not so great at prioritizing what activities would
make that life worthwhile. That’s why someday, when I meet St. Peter at the pearly
gates, and he asks me if I served my neighbor or helped the poor? I’ll have to respond
that, “No, but I almost finished a 200,000-stitch cross-stitch project.”
Judging by what’s out there on social media, I’m not alone in this. I think humans
are hard-wired to zero in on the pointless, at the cost of the essential. We literally start
trying to communicate the instant we are born by crying loudly in an effort to tell the
world, “I’m hungry! I’m cold! I’m confused! And “Put me back!” These may be some of
the most relevant and honest things we will ever say in our lives. By the time we get to
the point where we can be understood by others, our brains have given up on
practicality. For example, what most toddlers can NOT say is, “Grandma or Grandpa”
despite thousands of repetitions, but they CAN say with great fluency any number of
four-letter words as a result of an unfortunate one-time exposure to Uncle Bob who will
not be invited back any time soon.
As far as I can see, the compulsion to embrace the most useless words never
leaves us. I once had a job helping adults with severe disabilities. Each day they would
spend time at different stations either learning skills or making things to sell at their
homes. One day I was supervising the coloring table. The pages they were working on
were super basic, A is for Apple, B is for Ball etc. All good until we came to X. X was not
for X-ray, or Xylophone or even eXit. To my delight, X was for Xiphias Gladius. I know
(because I went home and looked it up) that a Xiphias Gladius is a type of swordfish.
This became the grand hurrah of the coloring pages forever afterwards. I couldn’t let it
go, probably because I was bored out of my mind with “Z is for Zebra.” which, now that I
think about it, is also super useless information under the circumstances. The people at
that table may not have known how to write their name or how to count to three, or use
a spoon, but I made darn sure they wouldn’t go through life without recognizing a
Xiphias Gladius when they saw one!
My husband likes languages, so he’s especially prone to getting caught in the
trivialities. He once taught the story of Noah and the Ark to a Sunday school class of 11-
year-olds. There are many wonderful and inspiring lessons that can be drawn from that
story. And I sure hope the kids learned those lessons at home, because what they got
from Dave was the word, antidiluvian (meaning: from before the flood). With luck, that
might be useful as much as once in their lives on a trivia night sometime.
Then there was the time I taught English as a second language to adult Spanish
speakers. I really tried to teach them useful conversational English, but the only thing
I’m 100% sure I taught them was the phrase, “couch potato.” I didn’t mean to teach
them this, it just sort of slipped out one day and one of the younger guys thought it was
the greatest expression ever and used it about 10 times in five minutes. This triggered
the other guys to tease each other about being couch potatoes which made several of
the women comment on their husband’s potato like qualities, and class went downhill
from there.
Oh well. It’s all good practice, right? And my students could take comfort in the
fact that the few things I can say in Spanish, are a good deal less useful than being able
to say couch potato in English. Happily, humans continue to learn throughout their
whole lives, so there’s still hope. To date, I haven’t wasted any brain cells on learning
passwords or important birthdays, but now I can say, “There’s a cow in the house!” in
French. Maybe someday I’ll learn how to say, “Pass the pastries.” When it comes to
French, I really can’t think of anything more important to say than that.