The Royal 'We' is Not Amusing [Where the Hell Was I?]

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June 19, 2003

The Royal 'We' is Not Amusing

Could anything that involves this much drooling really be so bad?

Wow -- I really didn't think it would happen so quickly. Yesterday, I decide to write a tagline for each entry. And here we are, 24-ish hours later, and I've managed to write one that even I don't really understand. Cool! Apparently there's a party in my head, and I'm not invited.

~~So how about we talk a little bit about useful phrases for a while?~~

Okay, stop right there. Back it up. There are a few things that I've promised myself never to do, at least not without giving myself a good spanking for as punishment.

(And when you get right down to it, can you really give yourself a bad spanking, hmm?)

"Shut up. Go hump the dog or something. Minnie Pearl is on."

I won't try to dredge up the whole list now, but I do know that a couple of the verboten items were inspired by things that I often heard when I was a kid. One of them, for instance, was to never explain anything, to anyone, ever, by saying, 'Because I said so'.

I got that one a lot when I was a kid, probably because I was one of those annoying, nosy 'Why? Why? Why, why, why?' little monsters. And I'm sure I deserved it, at least sometimes, for instigating conversations like this:

Me: Can I go outside and play?
HPRP (Hitherto Perfectly Reasonable Person): No, sorry.
Me: But why?
HPRP: Because it's raining.
Me: Oh. Why is it raining?
HPRP: Um, well -- I think it has to do with low pressure systems or something.
Me: Oh. What's a low pressure system?
HPRP: It's -- ah, well, it's a weather system, with... um, lower pressure than you might normally expect.

(An aside: many of the people I talked to as a child were Perfectly Reasonable (to a point), but most weren't terribly Scientifically Inclined.)

Me: Oh. Why's the pressure so low?
HPRP (now becoming less of a RP, because I'm interrupting 'Hee Haw' or 'Matlock' or whatever the hell was on TV): I... um, I don't know. Maybe it had an air leak.
Me: But why does it have an air leak?
HPRP: I... just... but... go away.
Me: But why? Whyyyyyyyyy?
HPRP: Shut up. Go hump the dog or something. Minnie Pearl is on.
Me: Tellllll me. Whyyyyyyy?
HPRP: Just -- because I said so, ya chickensquirt! I made the leak, now it's raining, and you can't go outside because I Goddamned said so! There! You happy now?

And there's just no answer for that. No comeback, no more questions, just nothing.

(Though I did once screw up my courage and try, 'But whyyyyyy did you say so?' And I have never in my life been bitch-slapped so hard, before or since.)

So of course, people would figure out the pattern and start to play their trump card earlier and earlier in an effort to retain some scrap of their sanity. For example:

Me: Hey, do you know what time it --
Them: I said so! I said so! La la la, I fucking said so. That's it, end of story! La la la la...

Okay, I did say they tried to retain some sanity, but truth be known, most of them didn't exactly land on the planet swinging at a full bucket of balls to begin with, if you smell what I'm cookin'. Anyway, I told myself that I would never use 'Because I said so' as a reason for anything, ever, because it used to piss me off so much. That's near the top of my list of Things That I Must Never Do, No Matter How Tempting. So, naturally, I simply can't be around children, not even for a moment. And that's a Good Thing™. But I don't think that was my point this time...

What the hell was I talking about? Oh, right, the list of things not to do.

Anyway, somewhere further down the list, but in no danger of falling off, is suggesting that 'we' are going to talk about something, when really I'm the only one doing any talking (or typing, or miming, or semaphore signalling, or whatver; don't be a picky-ass), and you really don't have the slightest hint of a choice about the topic of "conversation". This was always popular in the schools, and it cheesed me off to no friggin' end.

Mr. Assmunch or whoever would weasel his way into the classroom and sneer, 'Why don't we talk about the Industrial Revolution today?' Or economic instability in post-War Europe. Or hydrogen bonding in ketones. It could have been anything. Mind you, it was never anything good to begin with, but I think even hearing, 'Class, how about we spend a few minutes chatting about Suzanne Sommers' breasticles?' would've sent me into a tizzy.

(No, not that kind of a tizzy. Well, okay, maybe if it was Show & Tell day at the old schoolhouse, maybe just a little tizzy then...)

Anyway, the point is, or rather was, several paragraphs ago, that asking someone whether they're interested in talking about something, and then:

1) not letting them talk at all ('No talking in class!')

B) not letting them honestly tell you whether they're happy with your subject matter

is just plain rude. Annoyingly, unforgivably, 'Come over here so I can give you an atomic wedgie, you needledick doofus' rude. So I'm not doing it. And now I'm all annoyed and pouty. I'm gonna go have a cookie, and I'll have to talk -- just me, mind you, and without asking permission from anybody on the subject -- about useful phrases some other time.

Until then, take care of yourselves out there. 'Cause I said so.