Word Abuse
Apparently there is a crisis looming on the horizon. Actually there may be several, but the latest one that grabbed a piece of my attention for a few minutes happened on my way to the Farmer's Market to buy some fresh corn, tomatoes, and a couple of cucumbers. (Besides thinking about what's for lunch, what does a retired guy do on a Saturday morning?)
When I turned on the car radio, National Public Radio was broadcasting an interview with an entomologist who was bemoaning the diminishing numbers of pollinators. Without pollinators, he said many plants would not produce the fruit that assures the continuation of the species. At the end of this certain extinction of some plant species, he predicated the human race would soon go hungry.
Wow! All of a sudden, I was interested in the sex-life of plants. With that interest piqued, my memory yanked me back to a sex education class in the seventh grade.
Mr. Frazier, a public school coach, seventh grade teacher, and Presbyterian Sunday School teacher was the one who first introduced me to the science of reproduction. Of course, his pedagogy was not of the "show and tell" type. He used no anatomically correct dolls, no pictures like you get from magazines at Barnes and Noble, and no television soap opera illustrations. In fact, Mr. Frazier never even mentioned sex in the same paragraph with any word about human life. He stuck to biology when he talked about the "birds and bees."
His lesson was not really about birds and bees, but plants; stamens, pistals, pollen, anthers and a dozen other words I can't remember. But I do remember learning that bees had a role in getting the pollen from the stamens to the pistils. And that's all I got out of my introduction to the subject euphemistically called "the birds and bees."
I was confused. Mr. Frazier hadn't talked about birds at all, only about flowers. Why didn't he just say he was going to teach us something about bees and flowers? Even though I learned nothing, I was afraid and ashamed that I didn't catch the apparent meaning of the birds and bees stuff. To avoid the shame, I wasn't about to talk to Mom or Dad. Fear of ridicule and the threat of being thought "slow" kept me from asking anyone questions.
Not until I overcame the fear of my mother catching me in Riley Cox's Pool Room did I learn that there was a different language available to learn about the birds and bees. The pool-shooting, poker-playing crowd in Cox's Pool Room didn't use botanical language like Mr. Frazier. They didn't seem to know or care much about stamens and pistils. Instead, they talked about people; people like Mike and Ike; people you could laugh at. Mr. Frazier didn't laugh much. Pool room regulars had a way of speaking that seemed to be easier to understand. Or maybe I was just older and wiser at 14 than at 12.
I digress.
Back to the entomologist on the radio. As he ended the interview with a plea for more accurate use of language, I thought maybe he was going to chastise teachers like Mr. Frazier for using words in the way politicians do, to conceal rather reveal truth.
I was wrong. Instead, he begged, "Please, do not call plants weeds and never refer to insects as bugs. Weeds are still flowering plants even though they grow where you don't want them." He continued his rant about insects deserving better treatment than being associated with negative ideas as in "Stop bugging me."
A comparison of Mr. Frazier's dance around words and a contemporary entomologist's longing for a taboo against certain words with the dialect of the pool room, I think I understand Jesus' preference for the straight forward language of the underclass and Luther's passion for getting the Bible into the language of ordinary people.
When I turned on the car radio, National Public Radio was broadcasting an interview with an entomologist who was bemoaning the diminishing numbers of pollinators. Without pollinators, he said many plants would not produce the fruit that assures the continuation of the species. At the end of this certain extinction of some plant species, he predicated the human race would soon go hungry.
Wow! All of a sudden, I was interested in the sex-life of plants. With that interest piqued, my memory yanked me back to a sex education class in the seventh grade.
Mr. Frazier, a public school coach, seventh grade teacher, and Presbyterian Sunday School teacher was the one who first introduced me to the science of reproduction. Of course, his pedagogy was not of the "show and tell" type. He used no anatomically correct dolls, no pictures like you get from magazines at Barnes and Noble, and no television soap opera illustrations. In fact, Mr. Frazier never even mentioned sex in the same paragraph with any word about human life. He stuck to biology when he talked about the "birds and bees."
His lesson was not really about birds and bees, but plants; stamens, pistals, pollen, anthers and a dozen other words I can't remember. But I do remember learning that bees had a role in getting the pollen from the stamens to the pistils. And that's all I got out of my introduction to the subject euphemistically called "the birds and bees."
I was confused. Mr. Frazier hadn't talked about birds at all, only about flowers. Why didn't he just say he was going to teach us something about bees and flowers? Even though I learned nothing, I was afraid and ashamed that I didn't catch the apparent meaning of the birds and bees stuff. To avoid the shame, I wasn't about to talk to Mom or Dad. Fear of ridicule and the threat of being thought "slow" kept me from asking anyone questions.
Not until I overcame the fear of my mother catching me in Riley Cox's Pool Room did I learn that there was a different language available to learn about the birds and bees. The pool-shooting, poker-playing crowd in Cox's Pool Room didn't use botanical language like Mr. Frazier. They didn't seem to know or care much about stamens and pistils. Instead, they talked about people; people like Mike and Ike; people you could laugh at. Mr. Frazier didn't laugh much. Pool room regulars had a way of speaking that seemed to be easier to understand. Or maybe I was just older and wiser at 14 than at 12.
I digress.
Back to the entomologist on the radio. As he ended the interview with a plea for more accurate use of language, I thought maybe he was going to chastise teachers like Mr. Frazier for using words in the way politicians do, to conceal rather reveal truth.
I was wrong. Instead, he begged, "Please, do not call plants weeds and never refer to insects as bugs. Weeds are still flowering plants even though they grow where you don't want them." He continued his rant about insects deserving better treatment than being associated with negative ideas as in "Stop bugging me."
A comparison of Mr. Frazier's dance around words and a contemporary entomologist's longing for a taboo against certain words with the dialect of the pool room, I think I understand Jesus' preference for the straight forward language of the underclass and Luther's passion for getting the Bible into the language of ordinary people.
posted by John | 8:55 AM
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