Ever Happen To You: Someone Stumbles Onto One Of Your Raunchier Posts?

Yep, happened to me this week, and it was one of D’s friends who saw it (no, I don’t know which of the many it was!:D), and she told her, "Gosh, I never knew Bill was the kind of person to use those kinds of words!!!:eek:)

So I told Dondra to ask her next time (in church), “What kind of person would that be exactly, _______”

That’s why I love you guys so much. You’re not judgmental.

I hate judgmental people!;);):wink:

Thanks

Q

Really what your wife should tell her friend is that style-shifting is a natural aspect of all language use, that she herself undoubtedly engages in, and that would become apparent to anyone snooping around looking at her own various communications.

Thanks, quizot. I wonder though, if I can write pretty much anything I want here, why shouldn’t I also do it in public without aspersions being cast against my character?

Out of respect for my wife, I try to “rein myself in” at family functions, but really, outside of a polite hello and a “Yeah!” to the question “How 'bout dem Dawgs?”, I don’t say much anyway because there’s no common ground between any of us. Additionally, they wouldn’t understand “poetic license” if I spent all day explaining it.

Consequently, I’ve stopped going to any of those things, and rarely ever go to church with her.

Then, with my dementia, there’s always the possibility I may say something inappropriate, which I have done, both here and in public. Y’all know this already, but when I do it around family, D will already have prepared them, so I’m “tolerated”.

So… when I’m writing either here or elsewhere, I feel at ease if I have to use “salty” language to make a point, but in public, I’m reluctant to do so.

Does that make me a “Literary Hypocrite”? :slight_smile:

Thanks

Quasi

This happened to me in the physical world.

One day, long ago, I had a brand new sketchbook. I had put one drawing in it, a cartoon of a diesel-powered vibrator. Then I went to the mall and left it in a phone booth (did I mention this was a long time ago?)

A few days later, I was at work. Someone came up to me and handed me the closed book, saying, “Is this yours?” There was no mention of the contents. Someone had found the book in the phone booth and returned it to my work, using the business card found in it as ID.

Man, that was embarrassing…

Well, I wouldn’t think of it as poetic license. Rather, it’s a well-documented phenomenon of linguistics that we help to create (or re-create) the nature of our relationships in the act of speaking itself. (This has happens with all humans.) You’re not necessarily the same person here that you want to be “in public” (though there probably are various manifestations of “in public” that you subscribe to).

Even here, within the message board as a whole, there are different fora in which users draw upon different manners of speech. Without looking at the the top of the page, I can tell when I’m reading a post from the pit, as opposed to GQ, simply by the way the posters shape their discourse. You can’t write “anything you want” in GQ, such as insults, etc., right? At least not without the same kind of aspersions you might receive in the “real” world.

Seriously. Who uses diesel anyway? Fumes in the bedroom are so off-putting. I’ll stick with the plug-in, thank you very much.

I never post under my name or one people know I use. I don’t save any history on the computer including .dat files. I would not be posting if anyone else were sitting nearby. So the chances of someone stumbling on my post would be 0.0%. Also, I never post anything using language or viewpoints other than my public persona so there would be no surprises.