Breaking the Code

In my 4 decades on this plant I have learned many things. One of the things I have learned is that when someone signs a letter with some variation of “Regards” what they are really trying to convey before they end their letter is: “f*ck off and f*ck you.”

Sad, but true… at least the majority of the time. Why do people hide behind benign words to thinly veil their malignant intents? Mostly because they know that the raft of sh*t their true words would reap them is not a hassle they want to deal with (or are brave enough to deal with).

What is worse than that is when people use their kind or sweet words to get what they want out of people — and then when either they do not get that they wanted — or are just “done”... you can be sure those sweet words take a hairpin curve and turn sour!

I didn’t understand it when I was a kid and heard the lessons about the tongue being the smallest member of the body but being capable of the greatest damage. I do now.

Whoever first said “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” was one of two things: deaf, or as yet unscathed by the double-edged sword of another’s words. Either way the physical wounds of sticks and stones heal long before the emotional wounds of misused words.

It would be nice if we lived in a world where people accepted self-responsibility and personal accountability for what the words that they put out there do to other people.

HA! I suppose I may as well be wishing for world peace, or a clean energy source apart from the fossil fuels that contaminated our Oceans in the Gulf during the summer of 2010.