Fiction - The Bowl

Introduction

What follows is a work of fiction.  All characters are totally made-up and any resemblance of any character to any real person, living or dead, or to any person who might be born at any point in the future, is purely coincidental.  Even objects not described by a proper noun are fictional.  There isn’t even a real bowl, nor any pile of actual vomit, and there’s not really a carpeted van.  Please don’t sue me.

The Bowl

So, somebody left this bowl at my house after the party.  I figured I’d just hang out and somebody would claim it, but that hasn’t happened.  Which is sort of surprising, actually.

Maybe somebody (i.e., the somebody who brought the bowl) had a really bad time at the party.  It did get a bit crowded in the kitchen, which I thought was cozy and gezellig, but who knows, maybe somebody felt claustrophobic.  Or did somebody have a bad time because of me?  I don’t think I got that drunk, and I’m 99% sure I didn’t tell anybody off.  Anyway, if you want your bowl back but just can’t face returning to the house, fear not:  if nobody claims it, I’ll put it out on the porch overnight and you can sneak over and fetch it.

But I’m actually guessing I’m not the problem—it’s probable that the owner of the bowl just doesn’t want it back, for whatever reason.  Maybe this person just binge-watched a season of Hoarders Miami – Major Depressives and is suddenly repulsed by almost all household objects, and this bowl is just collateral damage from that experience.  Maybe this person leaves behind at least one object wherever he or she goes.

But that’s a long shot; probably this abandonment boils down to the bowl itself.  Maybe it’s got a storied past.  Maybe it was a wedding present from somebody’s then-stepmother, who had to be invited to the wedding even though everybody knew that marriage (between the father and the stepmother) was doomed, which it has proven to be, as this bowl has outlasted that marriage by many years.  Maybe the owner of this bowl always hated this stepmother (or worse, this stepmother-in-law) but somehow just kept the bowl around, it being a handy size, and recently had some subconscious impulse which, if it could be put into words, would be something like “Now’s your chance!”

Maybe it’s even worse than that!  Maybe somebody’s college roommate, a real sweetheart, not in that sexy girl-next-door way but more of a den-mother type way, made the bowl in pottery class as an ashtray, a terrific jumbo-sized ashtray because somehow this crappy little student-ghetto rental house attracted all the smokers, they all smoked like chimneys, and never dumped the ashtray so a normal-sized one was impractical.  So this was call the butt-bowl and when the sweetheart roommate became more skillful in pottery she made another ashtray that was shaped like a giant butt, the perfect butt-bowl, and it was this hilarious running joke all through college, and when everybody graduated Matt got the actual butt-shaped-bowl and my party guest got this, the original butt-bowl, and they continued to make random jokes about it over the decades until earlier this year when Matt (who’d been smoking since junior high) was diagnosed with lung cancer.  I wouldn’t want my butt-bowl back either.

Or maybe my party guest felt bad about this bowl because he or she has used it as a compost bowl for the last few years and—at the last minute before heading over—needed something to put the roast garlic in and just cleaned it out real quick, and then on the drive over his or her spouse/other said, “I can’t believe you’re bringing food in that—it reeks!” and they got in this big fight over it because the second spouse/other has always hated the smell of compost and couldn’t scrub the smell out of that bowl, no matter how hard he or she tried, and in fact had a childhood trauma around being made to eat a hard-boiled egg at a campground once even though he or she hated them and was sure to vomit, which he or she actually did, right there at the campground, and it was fricking pink for some reason, and something about the smell of decomposing compost always brings him or her right back to that campground and “Can we please, please get a proper compost bin with a tight-fitting lid, and never look at this stinky bowl again?”

Or maybe the truth is even darker.  Maybe my party guest got this bowl from her mom, who divulged a chilling back-story.  Maybe the mom grew up in a totally dysfunctional family, both parents complete drunks, and one night they were all actually cooperating in the kitchen, cleaning up and washing dishes, and it was almost pleasant and she thought, “We’re all getting along, like a real family!” and then something snapped, maybe her dad insulted her mom, who threw a plate at him, and he threw a mug at her, and next thing you know the kids are taking sides and the whole family is screaming and throwing bowls, plates, cutlery, it’s all smashing all over the place, and this goes on for like five straight minutes and it’s a miracle nobody gets hit by a flying saucer, until everything is broken, and amazingly they all start laughing, and (the mom concludes), “It was actually kind of fun, if you can believe that! And then I discovered this bowl hiding under a towel, the sole survivor, and I decided since it could have just as well been broken, I’d take it for myself, and I kept it when I went off to college and had it for decades until I just couldn’t handle all this history anymore, which is why I gave it to you.”  And her son or daughter used it for years too, until he or she came to the same conclusion about its history, which is why it’s going unclaimed now.

Wow, the ravings of a lunatic!  Of course the truth must be simpler and less dramatic than all that.  Not that it’s completely simple, or the bowl would have been claimed by now—but surely nothing sinister is going on.  Maybe the partygoer has a secret that’s not so dark, but a secret nonetheless, which exerts a small but nontrivial force.  Maybe he (to randomly pick a pronoun) was poking around in a thrift store or pawn shop with his wife/other, and saw her admiring this handmade bowl, and she said, “You can tell it’s handmade because it’s imperfect—the rim isn’t perfectly round, see” and he could tell she liked it, but she never bought anything for herself, even a used bowl that’s like a buck fifty, and they left without it, and the next day he sneaked back there and bought it, figuring that when, a day or two later, she would say, “I should have bought that bowl, I really liked it,” he could magically produce it, and she’d throw her arms around him and nuzzle at his neckline.  And his scheme actually played out, almost exactly like that, except that when he went to buy the bowl, the clerk said, “Oh, you know what, I actually have the box that came in!” and went to the back and fetched a box that had a photograph of the bowl on it and the words “Real Ceramic Bowl” and when he looked closely he saw that even in the photo the bowl had that irregular rim, for that clumsy handmade look, so that he could imagine hundreds, thousands of these streaming down a conveyor belt, all absolutely identical with the same fake imperfection along the rim engineered to give the bowl a handmade (dare we say “artisanal”?) look, and so of course he threw away the box before presenting the bowl to his wife, and his wife never knew the truth, and she thought warmly of the bowl for all those years so every time he saw it he felt kind of shitty.  So, having left it behind at the party, he’s hoping she won’t figure out where the bowl went to.

Or maybe, just maybe, the bowl has no interesting history at all, but something about it triggers unpleasant memories anyway.  Maybe it’s something about the stripes, about how instead of being straight and level they rise up on one side, like a curling lip, like the perpetual sneer, more of a smirk than a grin, that that one kid on swim team always had … what was his name?  Mike King.  Who always seemed to be making fun of you, who pretended to be nice but this was a form of mockery, and you badly wanted to believe he was being nice for real, so much so that when, after the Cherry Creek Invitational swim meet, he invited you to listen to Kiss in the back of his uncle’s van, you actually said yes, and you sat uncomfortably in this carpeted van listening to this weird music you didn’t like, and Mike King smirking the whole time, and when you left the van (squinting in the sudden, dazzling sun) you couldn’t find your family, and when you did they bawled you out for wandering off, where the hell were you, and then you found out they went out for pizza, which your family never did, and you missed out, and your brothers rubbed this in mercilessly until you pitched a massive tantrum, one that was so big it became bigger than you, to where you didn’t even know how to shut it down, and all the while you were tantrum-ing the family was making this grim procession back to the car—it seemed like miles—and somewhere along the line it dawned on you that you were too old for tantrums like this, and this would have to be your last.  Having all this memory bubble up every time you look at the lopsided stripe on this bowl … I can’t blame you, I wouldn’t want the bowl back myself.

You know what?  I will confess I’ve inherited things before after parties, little Tupperwares or serving spoons or whatever, and when they’ve gone unclaimed and become part of our stuff here, I didn’t really mind.  But in this case, I don’t think I can ever accept this bowl as one of my own.  It’s just too distinctive and too freighted with possible significance.  So please, somebody claim it—but for God’s sake don’t reply-all.  And seriously, if I don’t hear from anybody by Sunday night I’ll put it out on the porch for you.  Please, please come get it.

The Grammar Wars

Introduction

I wouldn’t say I pride myself on knowing grammar.  To me, this is a strange thing to be proud of because grammar is simply a set of rules that anybody can learn.  To be a great artist or musician is to contribute something unique to the world, whereas using—and even defending—good grammar ought to be something everybody does.

I notice people’s grammar errors all the time, but almost never point them out.  Sometimes, though, my merciful nature is not observed or appreciated.  For example, a couple decades ago I happened to see the notes a colleague had taken when checking my job references.  She’d interviewed my old bike shop boss, and asked him about my language skills.  “He was always correcting people’s grammar,” my boss had told her.  Maybe he thought he was helping.  I’m lucky this didn’t cost me the job.

The following post concerns a recent debate over correct usage, while delving into some past history to provide context and, I hope, amusement.

The journalists

The other night my wife hosted a dinner party for some old friends from her journalism days.  A couple of them chatted away at the kitchen table while I poured myself a beer at the counter.  “What are you doing?” E— asked.

“I’m pouring a beer,” I said.  The other guest, R—, said, “Yeah, but what’s with the…” (here she mimed how I’d been swishing the beer around in the bottle).

“Well, it’s a Belgian style beer so I’m swishing around the last third of it before pouring it, while chanting my personal mantra,” I replied.  (I wasn’t exactly chanting; it was more of a whisper.)  R— asked what my personal mantra was.  I’m a bit embarrassed by it, so I dodged:  “It’s a brief statement that lasts just the right amount of time, to make sure you swish the beer long enough.  The actual content of the mantra isn’t important.”

“Yes, but what is the content?” she persisted.  Given the natural curiosity of journalists, there was no getting out of it.  I replied, “It’s ‘I … WILL … NOT … LOSE … EVER.’  I guess I say it ironically, because in fact I lose all the time.”

Improper usage

I sat down at the table with the journalists to enjoy my carefully poured beer and some French bread E— had brought.  Though it was good, he apologized that it wasn’t better:  “It’s from Boulange.  I don’t like it as much as” (here he named some bakery I’d never heard of).  “I love their bread because it’s … artistic-y.”

I replied, “I’m glad you said ‘artistic-y.’  I was afraid you were going to say ‘artisanal,’ which isn’t even a word.”  (“Artistic-y” isn’t either, of course, but it’s not pretending to be.)  R— jumped in, “Oh, I hate ‘artisanal’!  Is that true, it’s not a word?  I so want that to be true.”  I replied that it wasn’t in my dictionary. 

(I actually got into some trouble recently over this word.  In a recent blog post I’d written, “I’d be no less astonished if Burger King introduced a grass-fed Kobe beef burger with prosciutto and imported Gruyere on an artisanal semolina bun.”  Of course I should have put “artisanal” in quotation marks to show I was using it ironically.  A cycling pal e-mailed me (cc’ing our bike club), “Cool story. But really artisanal bread.  Hate the word artisanal.  Its so safeway target esque.”  His own poor spelling and punctuation aside, he had a point.  I replied, “True, ‘artisanal’ is a bonehead word, but doesn’t it seem like exactly the term Burger King would use?”)

Since the journalists and I were now on the subject of words we hate, and since I’d had a pent-up desire to vent about it anyway, I brought up my latest pet peeve, which is people pronouncing “processes” with a long “e” at the end, so it sounds like “process-ease.”  I hear this all the time and it rankles.  But E— didn’t agree.  “I’m pretty sure I’ve said ‘process-ease,’” he said carefully.  R— suggested we look it up, and seconds later both E— and R— were pulling out their smartphones.  I cried foul.

“You can’t trust the Internet for such stuff,” I said.  “There are too many pretend Internet facts.  You can support anything that way.  I’ll get a real dictionary.”  I went for my wife’s giant Webster’s Third New International unabridged dictionary.  (I’m embarrassed to say I had to ask where she keeps it.)

E— admired the dictionary, and challenged me to confirm that it’s unabridged.  As I thumbed through it, I said, “We had one of these growing up.  We called it ‘the big dick.’”  (Which is what a person runs the risk of being called if he’s too emphatic about word-related arcana, I privately reminded myself.)  To my horror, this noble dictionary seemed to support “process-ease.”

That “sēz” sure didn’t bode well for me.  I can’t remember exactly what E— said, but it was something like “Read it and weep!”  His triumphant delivery brought to mind Muhammad Ali’s jeer to the journalists who’d doubted him:  “Eat your words!”  E— had vanquished me utterly … or so it seemed.  But before I get to the rest of the story (don’t write off your humble blogger just yet) let’s explore why E— seemed to get such a thrill from proving me wrong.

My scrapper chops

The experience of zealously going toe-to-toe with word-lovers is nothing new to me, and probably not to E— or R— either.  I suppose any logophile will pursue his defense of the language with much vigor, but I doubt that’s the sole reason for E— ’s triumphant tone .  I suppose my recently disclosed personal mantra—“I WILL NOT LOSE EVER”—also came into play.  Indeed, I never expect to lose in such matters, and surely E— and R— could sense this.

Okay, I’ll just say it:  when it comes to grammar, I can be cocky.  For example, I hadn’t hesitated to bash “artisanal,” and my declaration that it’s not a word was kind of a bluff—I’d only ever checked in one dictionary.  (As it turns out, it’s in one of my dictionaries but not the other).  Nor had I paused to consider the possibility that E— and/or R— might routinely say “process-ease” and be offended that I disparaged that pronunciation.  Looking back, I see I was pretty bold in my assertions.  Who wouldn’t want to take me down?

You may be wondering how, if I almost never try to correct people’s grammar, I have such confidence?  Well, there is one important exception to my anti-bashing rule:  for decades I have ruthlessly policed my brother Bryan’s grammar.  It’s reciprocal.  We don’t find fault very often but when we do, we never let it slide.  We do a little dance.  For example, in an online chat Bryan once wrote, “He got his just desserts.”  As you yourself immediately noticed, this is wrong.  I fired back, “Of course what you meant to type was ‘just deserts,’ since it’s from the word ‘deserve,’ having nothing to do with dessert.” There’s an odd procedural form Bryan and I use when we correct each other.  We never say, “You bonehead, that’s bad grammar!”  Instead, we always say “Of course what you meant to say was….”  I think this is to intensify the pain of the barb by being perfectly gentlemanly.

Now, in decades of calling out each other’s grammar errors, neither of us has ever actually defended himself in earnest.  I suppose this is because we are both absolutely certain that the other wouldn’t call out an error unless he was damn sure it was an error.  When Bryan read my “just deserts” comment, he must have immediately grasped that the fact of a bakery called “Just Desserts” doesn’t make the spelling right; it’s a deliberate misspelling in service of a lame pun, like the restaurant “Thai-rrific” or the upstairs barbershop “We’re Up Hair.” 

Naturally, Bryan recognized that defending something like “just desserts” would be rhetorical suicide.  On the other hand, he can’t admit defeat, because I’m his little brother.  (When the tables are turned, I can’t admit defeat either, because I have an English degree and he doesn’t.)  So whenever we’re called out, our response is one of two dodges.  One—and the wording varies so little that I can give this pretty much verbatim—is, “Yes, I know, I was just speaking in the vernacular … you know, coming down to your level.”  The other (which is more appropriate with a misspelling) is, “Yes, I know, I was just testing you, and I’m pleasantly surprised that you passed.”

When I think about it, it’s plain to see that my routine battles with Bryan, coupled with our tradition of denying wrongfulness, surely inflect my overall attitude toward grammar, reinforcing the cockiness I mentioned earlier. 

My “cornered badger” policy

Upon further reflection, I realize that there are a couple more exceptions to my policy of not pointing out grammatical errors.  For one thing, I consider it my duty as a parent to always correct my kids’ mistakes (and if I get a “what-ever” response, there’s a secondary debate about why grammar matters).  In addition, I can be ruthless when somebody tries to “correct” me when I’m not actually wrong.  Since, in this situation, I can’t be seen as a bully, nor can I be faulted for undue linguistic precision, I take such challenges as an invitation—as a mandate, even—to defend myself.

Here’s an example.  Back in the ‘80s, my friends and I had a dinner party where we met one guy’s new girlfriend for the first time.  I liked her well enough I guess, until she committed what I considered a major gaffe.  I’d said to the group, “There’s ice cream for whoever wants it,” and she interjected, “You mean ‘There’s ice cream for whomever wants it.’” 

That she was rude, and wrong, was bad enough, but the nature of her attempted correction made things worse.  In my opinion, using “whom” where “who” is called for is the worst kind of blunder.  If somebody makes the inverse mistake, using “who” where “whom” is called for, he or she is either making a very understandable error (after all, “who” vs. “whom” is complicated) or might be deliberately using incorrect grammar to avoid seeming stodgy and punctilious.  I myself have occasionally avoided “whom” even when it’s the correct word, so as to not alienate somebody (for example, a work contact known for his highly approximate grammatical usage).  When I hear an erroneous “who” or “whoever” I’ll never call the speaker out on it, unless it’s my brother or one of my kids.  Thus, when I use “who” or “whoever” correctly, and then somebody displays a toxic blend of ignorance and gall in telling me I’m wrong, I come out with both barrels blazing.

I walked the girlfriend through the grammar.  “Look, ‘whoever’ is the subject of its clause, and ‘whomever’ would be used only if it were the object.”  She fired back, “But you wouldn’t say, ‘I gave ice cream to whoever.’”  Yes, I acknowledged, but that’s because “whomever” in that sentence would be the object of a preposition, whereas in my sentence, “whoever” is the subject, and the whole clause “whoever wants it” acts (collectively) as the object of the preposition.  (To be honest, I’m not even sure “to whomever” would ever be right … but no matter.)

The girlfriend realized her error, and—to her credit—admitted it.  But she continued to defend herself:  “I only got that wrong because I never actually learned grammar, like, you know, from a book.”  Here’s where I think I’ve matured:  today, I would leave it at that.  But back then, being a belligerent teen, I feigned surprise:  “You mean you were born knowing this stuff?  That’s impressive.  I was born without any language skills at all, and had to learn everything I know.”  Yes, this was a lot snottier than she deserved.  (It didn’t end up mattering, because she didn’t date my friend very long.  Either she was a psycho or he was a jerk, depending on whose side you took.  Probably they were both right.)

Back to “process-ease”

And now it’s time for the rest of the story.

As I stared in disbelief at the pronunciation guide for “process” in the Webster’s dictionary, E— took a victory lap by seeking further corroboration online.  I decided to further investigate the notation in my Webster’s:  “sometimes ÷|,se(,)sēz.”  The “sometimes” didn’t help much, but what was this division symbol?  I cursed myself for never figuring out how to use a proper dictionary, and flipped through the thick tome’s opening pages looking for “÷.”  Finally I found it and was richly rewarded:

“Aha!” I cried.  “The division sign indicates that many regard as unacceptable the pronunciation that follows!”  As I prepared to parlay this finding into full redemption, E— suddenly discovered, online, a very germane discourse on “process-ease” by a guy named Bernie Zimmerman.  At first this blurb seemed to validate E—’s position.  “Listen,” E— said, “‘To this day [process-ease] still sounds strange to me, but the more I hear it in everyday use, the less I feel confident about the way I've always pronounced it, which is similar to the way I pronounce the last syllable of the word glasses.’”  E— seemed to be on the way to scoring another point.  “I don’t like this Zimmerman guy,” I said.

But then E— scanned further down on his screen and said, “Whoah, what’s this?  ‘In recent years there has been a tendency to pronounce the plural ending -es of processes as “-ēz,” perhaps by analogy with words of Greek origin such as analysis and neurosis. But process is not of Greek origin, and there is no etymological justification for this pronunciation of its plural.”  By this point we were all cackling with pleasure, nerds that we are.  E— read on, “However, because this pronunciation is not uncommon even in educated speech, it is generally considered an acceptable variant, although it still strikes some listeners as a bungled affectation.”  (Italics his.  Well, sort of his.  They’re my attempt at conveying the emphatic delight with which he read that phrase).

I knew at once that this last statement had won E— and R— over to the traditional pronunciation of “processes.”  You can always count on a word-lover to prize accuracy over simply prevailing in a dispute.  For a moment I felt vindicated.  “Actually, I think I like this Zimmerman guy!” I said.  E— replied, “Well, he’s actually quoting Answers.com here.”

D’oh!  No matter how persuasive the “bungled affectation” argument was, I’d already expressed my misgivings about “pretend Internet facts.”  As I hadn’t intended to regard Internet research as admissible, I couldn’t very well cite Answers.com just because it happened to agree with me.  I needed something more.  So I decided to consult my (software-based) American Heritage Dictionary, because it has lots of usage notes on debated word forms, and maybe, just maybe, would include a useful commentary about “process-ease.”  This was a Hail Mary, but I felt it was all I had.

Here’s what this dictionary shows for pronunciation of “processes”:

Needless to say this isn’t very helpful.  Probably owing to compatibility issues between MS-DOS and Windows, the special characters look like an excerpt from a book about bridge, or a collection of ‘70s pendants.  The presence of two different plural pronunciations did worry me.

Scrolling down, I was glad to find this very compelling usage note:

Look familiar?  In this instance, Answers.com was quoting directly from the American Heritage Dictionary.  Thus, with the legitimacy of the “bungled affectation” zinger no longer in question, my redemption was complete.  I can now safely assume that neither E— nor R— will be saying “process-ease” anymore … and that’s really all I ever wanted.  That and some playfully barbed banter with people who care about words.

By the way, if you feel like defending “process-ease” yourself, feel free to comment below or e-mail me.  Since it’s not your grammar in question here, I think I can engage you in a debate without violating my policy of ignoring people’s grammatical errors.  In other words, BRING IT!

Update

Be sure to check out the comments below, and click here for my rebuttal to them.