So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Fading Fast]

A lot of that sort of thing is "hypercorrection," a habit of some speakers who are unsure and insecure about their grammar and its reflection on their social standing, and therefore use the more prestigious-sounding of the available constructions in the assumption that prestigious equals correct. The habit of saying "So-and-so and myself did such and such" instead of "So-and-so and I did such-and-such" is a prime example of hypercorrection.

I know people do this as I've heard it many times, but it doesn't really make sense to me as you don't get social points (I really have no idea how you get social points) for being wrong, but wrong in a pompous way.

I worked with a street-smart guy years ago who (IHMO) was a bit insecure about his vocabulary as he used "big" words wrong all the time. It, like with the "hypercorrection," makes no sense to me as you highlight your lack of knowledge by using a word incorrectly. He was (and is) very successful and runs an impressive company, but every time he speaks in public, he'll drop these dollar-sized words in that are being misused or awkward used. He actually is a natural public speaker when he isn't tossing in those oversized words.

Lizzie, your example is spot on. You can't go a day or two without hearing that (or some version of a misuse of a reflexive / intensive pronoun) on news-oriented TV shows.

 

[Ticklishchap]

My reticence makes me reluctant to admit that.

Fartulently, mine doesn't.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I know people do this as I've heard it many times, but it doesn't really make sense to me as you don't get social points (I really have no idea how you get social points) for being wrong, but wrong in a pompous way.

I worked with a street-smart guy years ago who (IHMO) was a bit insecure about his vocabulary as he used "big" words wrong all the time. It, like with the "hypercorrection," makes no sense to me as you highlight your lack of knowledge by using a word incorrectly. He was (and is) very successful and runs an impressive company, but every time he speaks in public, he'll drop these dollar-sized words in that are being misused or awkward used. He actually is a natural public speaker when he isn't tossing in those oversized words.

Lizzie, your example is spot on. You can't go a day or two without hearing that (or some version of a misuse of a reflexive / intensive pronoun) on news-oriented TV shows.

I think it comes more from a sense of personal insecurity. I hear it a lot from my mother in the way she hypercorrects her "r's" when she's around authority figures -- normally her speech is non-rhotic, but if she's on the phone with somebody from the bank or some such she over-pronounces them so the bank official won't think she's a hick and try to take advantage of her.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I think it comes more from a sense of personal insecurity. I hear it a lot from my mother in the way she hypercorrects her "r's" when she's around authority figures -- normally her speech is non-rhotic, but if she's on the phone with somebody from the bank or some such she over-pronounces them so the bank official won't think she's a hick and try to take advantage of her.

From what you've said about some of the episodes involving your mom in the past (turning the ex's motorcycle into scrap metal, and cussing out the snow plow driver immediately come to mind) I pity- PITY- any fool who'd ever try to take advantage of her. Although, I will add, I'd pay premium for a ringside seat to watch her deal with it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's really hard to watch the erosion of skills that comes from age. She's almost 80 now, and it's sort of like watching Willie Mays playing for the Mets.

 

[tonyb]

I think it comes more from a sense of personal insecurity. I hear it a lot from my mother in the way she hypercorrects her "r's" when she's around authority figures -- normally her speech is non-rhotic, but if she's on the phone with somebody from the bank or some such she over-pronounces them so the bank official won't think she's a hick and try to take advantage of her.

Truman Capote may have been a fabulist and a self-destructive libertine and a few other things decidedly undeserving of emulation, but he was a true master of the plain American idiom.

"In Cold Blood" is a lesson in straightforward storytelling. No need to have a dictionary at the ready. In his treatment of that horrible crime and the people who did it there's a whole lotta showing and not much telling. He trusts his reader to "get it." He shows us Perry Smith's fundamental sense of inferiority and how he overcompensates with hifalutin diction and childlike fantasies of musical stardom, and how resentful he is of a young, better educated and more articulate fellow who joined him and Dick Hickock on death row.

 

[tonyb]

It's really hard to watch the erosion of skills that comes from age. She's almost 80 now, and it's sort of like watching Willie Mays playing for the Mets.

My twice-widowed mom, who has survived cancer and a heart attack, has long been one to pass along the same story she told the last time I chatted with her, but this habit has become more pronounced in recent times. I doubt she is afflicted with anything diagnosable, such as Alzheimer's, but she is slipping. But hell, so am I, and I'm 21 years younger.

 

[Fading Fast]

It's really hard to watch the erosion of skills that comes from age. She's almost 80 now, and it's sort of like watching Willie Mays playing for the Mets.

I don't know if this has ever come up here before, but when I was about 8, a friend's dad got tickets and I saw Willie Mays play for the Mets at Shea. At 8, it felt like I was seeing a god play baseball (heck, if it happened today, I'd feel the same way).

I remember seeing him come over to the seats next to the field to sign autographs before the game (we were far away from that) . That's it, that is my only memory from that day, but it is a very clear one (I do believe he played that day, but can't honestly say I remember that or if the images in my head I have of him playing for the Mets are from TV).

 

[Harp]

I don't know if this has ever come up here before, but when I was about 8, a friend's dad got tickets and I saw Willie Mays play for the Mets at Shea. At 8, it felt like I was seeing a god play baseball (heck, if it happened today, I'd feel the same way).
... if the images in my head I have of him playing for the Mets are from TV).

He made a cameo on Bewitched, and Leo Durocher appeared in The Munsters...things you remember like seeing Mays play for San Francisco,
or your grandmother's derogatory comment one afternoon when Durocher wasn't inside the Cubs dugout but taking a day off...

 

[LizzieMaine]

Durocher went in for show biz in a big way when he was managing the Dodgers in the 1940s, and guested on all the famous comedians' programs at one time or another. His most memorable performance was with Fred Allen, doing a leading singing role in a Gilbert and Sullivan satire called "The Brooklyn Pinafore." If you have never heard Leo Durocher sing operetta, you have missed one of the great accomplishments of the twentieth century, on a par with seeing Lawrence Tibbett play shortstop.

 

[ChiTownScion]

He made a cameo on Bewitched, and Leo Durocher appeared in The Munsters...things you remember like seeing Mays play for San Francisco,
or your grandmother's derogatory comment one afternoon when Durocher wasn't inside the Cubs dugout but taking a day off...

2016 may have been the year that the Cubs finally went all the way, but you can't beat those years when Durocher was manager in terms of pure entertainment.

 

[2jakes]

My twice-widowed mom, who has survived cancer and a heart attack, has long been one to pass along the same story she told the last time I chatted with her, but this habit has become more pronounced in recent times. I doubt she is afflicted with anything diagnosable, such as Alzheimer's, but she is slipping. But hell, so am I, and I'm 21 years younger.

There are days when I can tolerate a bunch.

I try not to dig too deep .. or re-investigate a situation.

Every time I re-investigate ... maybe try to flip things back to where they ought to be ...
things often look far worse.

Some days, when things get upside
down....
President Lincoln helped me see the light.

 

[Zombie_61]

My twice-widowed mom, who has survived cancer and a heart attack, has long been one to pass along the same story she told the last time I chatted with her, but this habit has become more pronounced in recent times. I doubt she is afflicted with anything diagnosable, such as Alzheimer's, but she is slipping. But hell, so am I, and I'm 21 years younger.

My mom had been that way to a minor degree my entire life--not stupid by any means, but she could be a little "flighty" at times; hell, who isn't? In the last decade of her life it slowly became more pronounced--she'd tell the same stories over and over, and if anyone mentioned any form of disease or medical disorder her "cousin Peggy" had suffered from it at some point in her life. But she was always mentally present during our numerous conversations, and talking about "the good old days" always improved her mood so we'd listen with great interest. She even had detailed and thoughtful conversations with my wife about whether or not we believed there was an "afterlife"; apparently she didn't feel comfortable discussing that issue with her son. I attempted to explain this to the doctor who had diagnosed her as being in the early stages of Alzheimer's, but he was one of those arrogant "I'm the doctor, I know what I'm doing" types who wouldn't listen. In fact, the medication he prescribed made things worse with regards to her memory, and she would worry for hours about things like suddenly not being able to remember someone's name in mid-sentence, even though she would often remember a moment later or easily recognize the name on those occasions when we reminded her. So, yes, age had affected her memory, but she exhibited none of the other symptoms commonly associated with Alzheimer's.

 

[tonyb]

My mom had been that way to a minor degree my entire life--not stupid by any means, but she could be a little "flighty" at times; hell, who isn't? In the last decade of her life it slowly became more pronounced--she'd tell the same stories over and over, and if anyone mentioned any form of disease or medical disorder her "cousin Peggy" had suffered from it at some point in her life. But she was always mentally present during our numerous conversations, and talking about "the good old days" always improved her mood so we'd listen with great interest. She even had detailed and thoughtful conversations with my wife about whether or not we believed there was an "afterlife"; apparently she didn't feel comfortable discussing that issue with her son. I attempted to explain this to the doctor who had diagnosed her as being in the early stages of Alzheimer's, but he was one of those arrogant "I'm the doctor, I know what I'm doing" types who wouldn't listen. In fact, the medication he prescribed made things worse with regards to her memory, and she would worry for hours about things like suddenly not being able to remember someone's name in mid-sentence, even though she would often remember a moment later or easily recognize the name on those occasions when we reminded her. So, yes, age had affected her memory, but she exhibited none of the other symptoms commonly associated with Alzheimer's.

Alzheimer's is but one be form of senility, as I'm confident you know. It's not untypical in my experience, alas, for physicians to flippantly attribute an elderly or disabled person's difficulties to something for which there's little to be done anyway. It leaves that person and his or her loved ones feeling devalued, for good reason.

As to your mother's concerns over her forgetting a person's name and similar lapses of memory ...

I suspect almost all humans experience that. If occasion to recall such information comes up infrequently, we tend not to have it at the ready. I've forgotten the names, last names especially, of people with whom I once had daily contact. But I find that information coming back to me, often when I stop concentrating on it. It's in there somewhere.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Name-forgetting has become chronic with me over the last several years. I've had a kid working here for over a year now, and I still stumble over her name, even though it's a very simple one, and even though I see her practically every day and have had her over to my house many times. I frequently call her by the names of kids who worked here ten years ago until she gives me a look and I finally get it right.

I've had several kids work here who had the same, or similar names, including three with variations of the name "Kelsey" and two "Hannahs." I'm thinking in the future I might just restrict the hiring pool to variations of those names, so I don't keep forgetting.

 

[2jakes]

Embarrassing moments!

“Hi jake...how are you doing, haven’t seen you in a while ?”

"Hey there sweetie...I’m doing fine, what about you, how are you?"

“You forgot my name didn’t you?”

"why heck no!

“What is it?"

....

“Jerk!”

“No...that’s not it!”

“ Give me a hint?”

“Moron!”

"Hi there Maureen...how are you doing?!"

 

[ChrisB]

Embarrassing moments!

“Hi jake...how are you doing, haven’t seen you in a while ?”


“ Give me a hint?”

“Moron!”

"Hi there Maureen!"

I have the same problem, James.

 

[Harp]

2016 may have been the year that the Cubs finally went all the way, but you can't beat those years when Durocher was manager in terms of pure entertainment.

I recall the Durocher era as exceptionally entertaining. And Jack Brickhouse calling the games over WGN; along with Hamm's beer commercials.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I recall the Durocher era as exceptionally entertaining. And Jack Brickhouse calling the games over WGN; along with Hamm's beer commercials.

 

[Harp]

Never saw that skit before. I took basic training at Ft Polk, Louisiana with a bunch of guys from Chicago, and the Cadre took the entire company
to Houston as a romp to meet some 'girls' before the advanced phase; although I was detailed to guard duty and remained on post.
Apparently all the ladies of the evening descended on the company's hotel. The stories told were salacious, but the Chicago crowd happened to
run into Jack Brickhouse at a restaurant. That meeting topped the trysting.