Acronymish

Since moving to Huntsville I have the odd sensation of living in a foreign country where my knowledge of the language spoken is limited to a few phrases recalled from a high school foreign language course. Because, like many of you, I now work with the government. Which means I have been introduced to the government’s very own variation of the English language based almost entirely on endless strings of acronyms.

Like a tourist, I consult on a regular basis the Acronym-to-English guide (AEG) the government has thoughtfully provided. Using acronyms is supposed to streamline our communication. But more often than not you don’t know what the acronym stands for, which means you have to ask. And finding out what it stands for doesn’t necessarily clear things up.

But my natural inclination to blame the government for my difficulty assimilating to Acronymish isn’t entirely fair. This language conversion isn’t limited to the government; they’ve simply perfected the art form. Financial institutions, technology, healthcare – they all rely on acronym shortcuts designed solely to confuse the masses (CTM). The reason it takes the masses so long to realize they’ve been violated is because companies shield their illegal activities with a barrage of acronyms. By the time we’ve looked up WPTSAYM - JSH in the AEG to discover it means “We plan to steal all your money - just sign here,” it’s too late. And it’s not like they weren’t honest and upfront about it. If they had warned us in French, we’d still be held responsible for the consequences, right?

Despite the potential for harm, we go along with all these acronyms because we as a culture have become so lazy we can’t be bothered to verbalize whole words anymore. We use acronyms so seamlessly in our everyday conversations that we’ve forgotten that the acronyms actually stand for anything. If someone asked me to pick up a Digital Versatile Disk on my way home from work, I wouldn’t have a clue where to go for one.

Like cavemen who used one simple stick drawing to mean “I went hunting for seven days and killed this antelope by stabbing him with my spear. And wouldn’t you know it? I got a splinter,” we are regressing to the point where we are able to convey a complex thought process with just a few simple letters. Contrarily, if we take too long to convey our meaning, or share something nobody wants to hear, it’s TMI. Then again, it could just be that you have ADD and any I is TMI.

Computerized communication, more than the government, will be the ultimate force behind converting English into a language made up entirely of acronyms. My young nieces and nephews consider me ridiculously old fashioned because I use complete sentences in IM, while the messages they send me are completely incomprehensible jumbles of symbols, letters, numbers and emoticons. I should probably ask them to decipher the government documents I am struggling with at work; it is in, after all, their language. By the time their generation is running this country, speaking whole words and sentences will be as embarrassing to them as when our grandparents spoke the language of the “old country.”

But like my grandparents who continued throughout their lives to speak a mixture of English and German, no matter how much I try to assimilate to the new culture, I’m sure I will intermittently throw in an old-fashioned fully formed word now and then. I won’t be able to help it. It was the language of my people.

Lessons in Southern Hospitality

Whoever coined the phrase “Southern hospitality” was not kidding around. I was raised by a bunch of easterners whose idea of hospitality was pretty much limited to bagels and nose-hair-curling coffee. Moving to the South has made me painfully aware that the version of hospitality I learned is the equivalent of kindergarten-level here. I am now studying the veritable art form that is Southern Hospitality. Or, in my own words: How to Be Nice to People.

In New York you go out of your way not to acknowledge other people. It is never permissible to make eye contact with anybody, since it could result in a situation involving the police. With eye contact considered rude at best and dangerous at worst, pleasant conversation was out of the question. You went about your business pretending you were the only person on the street, and everybody else did the same. If you didn’t have anything important to say, such as “get out of my way,” you kept your mouth shut.

It did not take long for me to learn the basic, expected gestures of Southern Hospitality. But it’s taking me a good deal longer to actually put them into practice. The finger wave from the steering wheel, for example. Aside from the fact that any distraction from my form of driving could be lethal, it’s just not a gesture that comes naturally to me. In New York our finger gestures had a whole different meaning.

The art of pleasant small talk is another aspect of Southern Hospitality I am trying to master. My Love is from the South and well versed in pointless chit-chat. He can strike up an impressively mundane conversation about the weather or Applebee’s menu or the aesthetics of a license plate tag or any number of pointless, mind-numbing topics of conversation with strangers he may run into at, say, the gas station, with no difficulty. My conversations with complete strangers have always been limited to “How are you?” and “Fine.” Anything more drew wariness and irritation.

It’s not just an inability to perform these little niceties that troubles me; I am equally uncomfortable receiving them. People who wave to me when I am walking to the mailbox make me suspicious. When someone asks me a question in line at the grocery store I become flustered and tongue-tied. I immediately assume they are trying to steal my wallet. Because it can’t be that people are just this nice.

But the hospitality of strangers is nothing compared to the hospitality of people you know, which can border on terrifying. When I visit My Love’s family, I am so unnerved by their hospitality that I develop a stutter. My Love’s mother will, from the moment I walk in the door, try to press all her most precious belongings on me. “Do you see anything you like?” she’ll ask eagerly, while I stumble about her antique-furnished home, looking for the bagels. At first I thought she meant, Did I like her home? I came to realize she meant, did I see anything I’d like to actually appropriate?

My upbringing has taught me that it is rude to make a habit of going shopping in other people’s houses, and yet here it seems it’s rude if you don’t. Southerners are so gracious they would rather politely transfer all their possessions to you, and sit on the floor in an empty house, then worry for the rest of their lives that there may have been something you saw and liked in their home that they didn’t give to you.

I’m trying, really I am. On our last visit I accepted from My Love’s mother four framed prints, a mirror, and a canoe. I continue to develop my polite conversation skills, which still have the awkward quality of a child’s first steps. And, like those early walkers, I often trip over my own feet. It just doesn’t seem natural, all this niceness. It embarrasses me and makes me uncomfortable. So if you are a true master of Southern Hospitality, please put me at ease by ignoring my presence except to cut me off in line or give me the other finger in traffic. Then I’ll truly feel welcome.

Chigger Mythology

In New York City, insects and wildlife are limited to cockroaches, the occasional squirrel, rats and Wall Street brokers. Although rats should probably be categorized more as an alien life form than “wildlife” as typically defined.

Over the centuries these few species and the 2 million sub-humans who inhabit the tiny island of Manhattan have come to an agreement. All go about their business trying desperately to pretend the others don’t exist. While the occasional misinformed cockroach may be seen scuttling across the kitchen floor, New Yorkers know not to attempt to attack with something as ineffectual as Raid. Later that night the unharmed cockroach and several of its burly brethren will wake you out of a sound sleep, and ever so subtly threaten you with switchblades.

And that’s nothing compared to what the rats could do.

So my experience with nature, when I landed wide-eyed in Huntsville, AL, was fairly limited. I was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer audacity of the insects that refused to keep out of sight and maintain the “I don’t see you and you don’t see me” philosophy that worked so well for us in New York. Not only do they refuse to keep to the code, they will actually make contact with you in an extremely unpleasant manner.

At first I thought, “Okay, a couple of mosquitoes. I’m not such a wussy city girl that I can’t handle a few bites now and then.” Well, clearly my tolerance was the equivalent of a welcome mat to the little shits because as the summer progressed I started finding them in my home, which is just unacceptable. I discovered that if I neglected to move any object positioned within a few inches of the wall, in less than a week an entire colony of spiders would set up a civilization there. There’d be tiny little spider hardware and grocery stores, maybe a couple of churches. Some of the more literate spiders had a library.

Eventually word got out among the insect world that I was a real push-over, and a tasty Northern delicacy. Last week I was attacked by a veritable army of what I came to learn were “chiggers” when I volunteered, out of the kindness of my heart, and because I wanted to get in for free, at a Botanical Gardens function. Afterwards, I came home to discover my legs and feet covered in little red welts that itched so badly I nearly wept.

The ladies I work with, who have taken the naïve New Yorker under their wing, informed me casually during a meeting in the conference room that my discomfort was thanks to chiggers, which buried under the skin and continued to live off of their host. In other words, those were not bug bites – those were actual bugs, living in my skin.

Words cannot describe my horror. In those first few moments of enlightenment I was torn between crumpling into a sobbing heap and finding a way to claw out of my own body.

The ladies went on with the lesson by explaining that the chiggers needed to be smothered to death. One, a veritable walking Rite-Aid, whipped a bottle of clear nail polish from her bag and instructed me to polish every bump. With the thought of those things living under my skin – oh God I can’t even say it again – anyway, I yanked my pants legs up, right in the middle of the meeting, and gave my chiggers a manicure they wouldn’t forget.

And now comes the part when the naïve little Northern girl educates you Southerners about your pesky little cohorts. After racing home, doing a kind of leap/walk as if trying to shed my skin snake-like, I went online. Turns out it’s all just a myth. Chiggers don’t bury themselves under your skin and live on. In fact, they usually die before they’re even done biting, thanks to our anti-chigger antibodies.

But I want to make it clear: Just because I am relieved to know this it is not an invitation to the remaining chiggers out there. You’re going to have to find some other sucker to torment because the naïve New Yorker has wizened up and bought ten gallons of Bug-Off. This is war.