Sticky situations

I recently phoned my son, who was visiting a 'new woman'. He asked me if he could phone me back as he was, as he told me, "trying to get my car out of a difficult place".



When he phoned back, a few minutes later, I asked him if he was now out of his 'tight, sticky spot'.



"An unfortunate choice of words, Mother," he declared, roaring with laughter.



Honestly, I hadn't meant anything rude, but it just shows, one has to be careful how one phrases things these days.



It reminded me of long ago (1979?), when my brother had come from his boarding school to stay with me (he was about fourteen, I was about nineteen) and he told me about a man who had asked if he was 'gay'. He was clearly coming onto him, but in his innocence, my brother had no idea, though he did think it was a stange question.



"Yeah, sometimes I'm gay," he had responded.



Nowadays, the word 'gay' has been almost entirely taken over by its new meaning. You would never hear anyone under the age of about seventy proclaiming they 'were feeling gay'. Not without bringing on the sort of immature tittering such misuse of words generates.

A lady who works with me in the pub, (who is from Essex, which is important, only because she plays on this) comes out with some priceless observations, things she has heard which she declares with the earnestness of a Missionary, as if there is nothing bizarre or wrong in them.

For instance, when I told her that my son, who was dating a Guatamalan girl, told me her family wanted him dead, her response was: "Well, they're like that over there, ain't they. I mean, they're into the blood sacrifice type thing. They can't 'elp it, it's cos they're Aztecs."

Yesterday, she was talking about a residential course she had gone on once, "It was on the recession." I remarked that that sounded like rather a dull and pointless waste of a good weekend. Realising her mistake, she laughed and said, "Oh no, I meant regression. That's it. You know, going back to previous lives and stuff."

Whether it was recession or regression, they both sound fairly odd to me.

But, she's not stupid. I'm sure she made this mistake deliberately, to play up to the 'blond and thick' reputation Essex women have. In fact, she's not blond. And she's definitely not thick. Dipsy, but not thick. And she makes a slow day at the 'office' far more entertaining!