Eating Jell-O With Chopsticks

I could be wrong (tough I'd hate to spoil my record at this late date), but it seems to me that the female side of our family is far guiltier of the problem than we of the male gender.

The problem I refer to concerns grasping the meaning of certain utterances, a problem I compare to eating Jell-O with chopsticks. It's there, all right, but you just can't get hold of it.

Have you got a minute?

Coming into the house from my daily chore of helping our scaredy-cat down from the buckeye tree, I said to this person, who had forsaken the kitchen sink to watch the Boston Marathon, "How's it going?"

To which she replied, "The leader is in second place."

While you're thinking that over, store this one away for further mind boggling.

When we stepped outside for our afternoon walk, this person pulled the collar of her jacket up to her neck with the observation, "The wind is colder than it looks."

Or try this for bubbles in the think tank. Looking up from a photo in our family album, she made the observation, "You look more like your dad than he did."

Or, if you wouldn't be embarrassed by having the state house you until you recover, dwell on this one. This person, being a white-knuckled passenger whenever I'm at the wheel, once remarked (after fog caused me to drive on the sidewalk rather than on my side of the street), "You should drive over here sometime when you're driving."

If this muddlement went no further, no big deal – except for my having developed a slight nervous twitch over the years. But it becomes a big deal when this knack for obfuscation extends to the second generation. And where it may go from there boggles the mind – if the mind is not already boggled to the limit, that is.

We were talking here of a daughter who, at the faultless age of four, showed great promise for following in her mother's wobbly way with words. To wit:

Still glowing from a family trip to the Great Smoky Mountains, she explained to her chum next door, "They're like Niagara Falls, only a hill – a longaways hill."

She declined to go sailing with me and her siblings because "that would leave Mom by her lone." So as not to wake her mother, sleeping in on Sunday morning, we were all to "tip on our toes." When her foot went to sleep, she complained that it felt "fuzzy."

Neither person, case, syntax, tense, nor common sense ever stood in her way when expressing her thoughts. To check her Halloween costume in the full-length closet-door mirror, she asked her older sister to "towards it this way" And failing to fathom her brother's slight-of-hand trick, she said, "Now make it disappear back."

Taking liberties with the language becomes all the more glaring in contrast to the clarity of expression by the male side of our lineage – with the possible exception of one of Mother's uncles fresh off the boat from the Old Country.

Coming into my dad's grocery store at Richfield Center (Michigan, of course), he approached the counter and delivered this remarkably pronouncement: "I vant to buy an empty barrel of flour to make a hencoop for my dog." (And that's the truth.)

As for my dad, he was never one to beat around the bush of perspicuity. Afflicted with palsy, he turned himself over to the University of Michigan Hospital, where a new medicine had been showing great promise.

He was given a shot, or dose, of this promising new palliative late one afternoon. A doctor came into his room the following morning and said, "Hold up your hands."

To which my dear old Dad responses, "What for? You've got all my money."

How does this parallel "the leader is in second place"? Or "the wind is colder than it looks"? The answer, the doctor was not required to beat himself on the head with a bedpan trying to come up with the meaning – which, of course, was just a direct verbal dart-throw into the high cost of an overnight stay in the hospital at that time. We're talking here of up to 15 bucks for room and board. (And that also is the truth.)

Now I am not one to pick on someone who can't pick back, nor am I one to make fun of a childhood neighbor who had trouble speaking clearly. But modern-day speech therapy would have spared his coming to our door one day carrying a bushel basket and delivering this model of obfuscation: "I want thum torn. I don't want telled torn; I want it till on the tob."

After revealing the foregoing, I must confess that I am not entirely blameless when it comes to clarity of expression. Really. "Tongue-twisted" it's called, in my case.

The one example I continue to hear about occurred on the dance floor of the Riviera Club, Indianapolis, Indiana, April 15, 1955, 9:35 p.m.

This guy had asked my dear wife for a dance. He being one of those Casanova-type dancers, she had readily accepted. And I had contained my spleen until this dipsy doodler began holding her as though carrying a side of beef up a flight of stairs – at which point I took exception.

Rushing out on the floor, I separated the two and unleashed this mouthful of wage (and I quote): "I'll thank you to take your hands off my filthy wife!"

Needless to say, she continued to dance with the jerk until the last strains of "Auld Lang Syne" had faded into the rafters.

Also, needless to say – But I'll say it: Compared to atoning for that slip of the tongue (even after these 44 years, 4 months, and 10 hours), eating Jello-O with chopsticks may not be so formidable after all.