New words are popping up every day, but good advice never goes out of style
I met Augusta in the ladies’ room of the JC Penney store in Minneapolis. Never mind how it happened, but there was a towel dispenser malfunction and everything got really wet
While we waited for clothes to dry out, the subject of advice came up, as it will do. We were two girls of the same age from opposite sides of the country, and we were surprised to find that we’d received the same advice at various mileposts throughout our lives.
For instance, she recalled that the main advice on sex education she received upon graduation from high school was more or less confined to “See that all zippers are zipped up at all times.” We both recalled that this all-purpose phrase was pretty much the entirety of our information on this volatile, vital subject. Those of us from Catholic schools got additional stern advice from the sisters to carry a thick glossy magazine like Seventeen or Ladies Home Journal to slide into a critical location in case we had to ride on a boy’s lap in those pre-seat belt days.
This just goes to show that the most memorable advice may not be the most useful.
We have to know and remember so much more now. Just this month, Dictionary.com listed 1,700 new words. Many of us who launched into the world pretty sure we had a good grasp of the English language are now totally mystified.
The same week the new words were added came the astonishing word from Connecticut that their weather predicting groundhog, Chuckles, was arrested for defrauding the public by issuing a fraudulent weather prediction. At last word, Chuckles was still being held on a $10,000 bond. Poor Chuckles. That’s not funny.
I might manage all right if new words and conditions weren’t being added every day when I’m just barely coming to grips with those that are already here.
For instance, when I was a child, the phrase Helicopter Parent hadn’t been invented. In fact the first manned helicopter flight didn’t happen until the year before I started first grade. Our parents didn’t helicopter. They barely Oldsmobiled. We weren’t over parented. We were sent out to play after breakfast and told not to come back before dinner time, so we made our own way and our own rules. And we figured things out.
Kids have to get used to new things every day. In his book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, author Yuval Noah Harari says that for the first time in history, parents don’t know if they have anything to teach their children that will be relevant in 25 years.
But now suddenly, surprisingly it seems that my wise advice is needed as my journey has taken me to a whole new lexicon of words and experiences. After four months in assisted living, and as I’ve shared my journey, I get frequent requests for just a little insight. Once again, I feel pretty inadequate.
“My mother says she wants to stay independent,” one reader wrote. “But she’s becoming more and more isolated. We don’t know what to do.”
“We had a long-term care policy but now the insurance company won’t pay on it. My son says he could have bought a house with the money he put in to paying for the policy. We don’t know what to do.”
Any advice I have at this point seems very flabby. I do like this thought from Michael Dell at the University of Texas in 2003: “Try never to be the smartest person in the room, but if you are, I suggest you invite smarter people — or find a different room.” We can do that.
Words change and situations change. This is an actual notice I found on the bulletin board of our nearby aircraft production plant about 30 years ago: “Owners of cars which stick out in the traffic lanes will have their rear ends painted red. If they continue, we’ll do the same thing to their cars.”
Good advice never goes out of style.
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