No Political Correctness Among Friends

First, if you love political correctness, this won't be for you, although maybe you really need to read or hear things like this. Please don't limit yourself on humor and having some fun poked at you, "fight back" by humor. You're missing some fun and you'll feel far better about yourself than trying to always figure out how offended you are. We have to be able to take some kidding, but also some actual guff. If you can't do that, I don't know how you'll get through life when things really get serious. Now, please don't take this to mean that I'm saying we should all go around calling others names, as you'll read below. There is common sense in play at all times in our lives. I guess I would have to say, this is the most difficult article I have written here, because it is not easy to show how so many things happened, without using the actual .... ah, "language" that was used. That made the decision hard. That "language" is pretty tough, but that's just the point of this article, and please think in terms of this: if reading or hearing some "expletives" is the worst things you have happen to you in your life, DAMN ... I mean, DARN, you'll have had a HELL of ... I mean, a HECK of a good life. There are most certainly some valid points to particular aspects of "political correctness," but a lot of what has happened over the last few decades is not political correctness, but rather neurotic behavior used by some to flex a certain control over others. As I have written here before, none of us is really "sane," whatever the hell that actually means, but some folks have climbed onto the political correctness pony and ridden it to the point of absurdity, as they feel "offended" by all sorts of silly shit, to put it bluntly. The more they are catered to, the more they need to feel offended to keep getting the lift they need to feel control over others. As I've also written here before, if this silly shit continues, none of us will be able to speak to one another, for fear of uttering what the other person may feel is an offensive word or thought. If you have watched the CBS comedy "The Big Bang Theory," there is much "anti-political correctness" in the show, and while occasionally the characters get their feathers ruffled by one of the other characters, usually by Sheldon (played by Jim Parsons), they all end up understanding and getting along. They DO NOT see each other as "the enemy;" at least, not for long, and they see how none of the real or perceived insults will end the world any time soon. Do you think there's a lesson for society here?

Anyway, more than 25 years ago, there were three of us who hung out together constantly; like, I mean, EVERY DAY! Besides myself, there were Toomie Bill* and Eileen, aka, "The Eye In The Sky." ** Oh, there was also "Rocky," the dog, aka "Rock." Unfortunately, Eileen died about 2 years ago, and I still really haven't dealt with that fact in my mind, if you know what I mean. She was a big woman, and she had endured a lot of snide comments about her size, but she dealt with the comments, and she was very capable of firing right back. Now, I can't tell you what was in her mind, and I'm sure the comments hurt at times, but she also accepted who she was and she could turn her weight into a punch line. She and Bill were always arguing, and one time, I don't remember what it was about (it didn't take much), but she said, in reference of how to shut him up, "I'll sit on him!" I'm going to tell you folks, I laughed so hard, I thought I was going to pop a blood vessel! All I could imagine was, Eileen sitting on Bill and his eyes bulging out of their sockets! Bill would call Eileen, "F---in' b--ch." She didn't get all down and out about it or whiny, she retaliated! He called her that ALL THE TIME! The arguments between the two of them went on every day... like 20 times a day! I'm serious. Bill's temperament lent itself to teasing him, and me and my one liners could skewer him quickly. He could get a little whiny and he'd say, "He shouldn't be sayin' that about me," which would bring Eileen to quickly say, "Oh geez! What a puss!" He would just bristle, followed by, "Shut the f--k up, ya f---in' b--ch!" Eileen just totally loved it when I'd piss off Bill, and we would double team him, at times. He would cuss us and call us all sorts of names, and the madder he got and the more he cussed us, the more she loved it! Sometimes, if he stopped for gas, we'd have him so riled up, he would be talking to himself on the way to pay for the gas, and he'd turn back to us and shout some obscenity! She would laugh hysterically. I'd get a good one liner in on Bill and he'd say, "He thinks he's f---in' funny!" So Eileen would say, "He made me laugh!" He'd just burn up! We would be watching television and Eileen would sit on the couch and Rock would bring his tennis ball to her, which she then would hold down with her foot. Rock would bark and bark, causing Bill to yell, "Give him his f---in' ball, ya f---in' b--ch! I can't hear the TV!" Bill is a "telephone person," he LOVES the phone, so if you cut him off of that, LOOK OUT! One time the three of us were supposed to go somewhere and he called Eileen, who lived just a few houses up the street. He came storming out into the kitchen and shouted, "That f---in' b--ch took the phone off the hook!" I couldn't stop laughing. Another time, I don't remember what I said, but he shouted at me, "SHUT THE F--K UP!" I acted very subdued and asked, "You mean that's gettin' on your nerves?" And Bill screamed, "F---IN' YES!" So I looked skyward, folded my hands and said, "Lord, there IS justice in the world!" Eileen loved it! Years later, after Bill had moved away (which deserved another, "Lord, there IS justice in the world!"), he was in the hospital for quite some period of time. He improved, but he temporarily lost his voice, which when I told Eileen, prompted her to ask, "What will happen to the phone company?" (because of his love of the phone) Then Bill's partner, Toomie Bob (hey, that's the way the names go), emailed and said the doctor was going to do something to restore Bill's voice. All I could think was, "Bob.... can't you pay that doctor NOT to give Bill his voice back?" (Hm, I wonder if Bob had actually thought about that too?) Also after Bill had left town (did I say that deserved another, "Lord, there IS justice in the world!"), he called me three times one night, but I wasn't home. The third time, after some choice words for me on my answering machine, he left a phone number. When I got home, the answering machine was blushing and had its fingers in its ears, so I said to myself, "Oh boy, Bill called again!" So anyway, I called the number he had left. He had a call blocking service for unidentified numbers, and I had an unlisted number, so the call could not go through. This was so long ago, I had WEB TV, which was internet service and equipment that could be hooked up to your television. Your TV screen displayed the web pages. So I wrote an email to him, which I knew would get under his skin. "All three times you called, I was not home, so I figure, there must be a God. Then I tried to call the number you left and it said the call couldn't be completed. Now, I KNOW there's a God!" The next morning, 6 a.m. the phone rang (I was an early riser, so I was awake). When I answered, Bill didn't say, "Hello," or "Good morning," he said, "You're a real f---in' comedian!" Hahahahaha! I laughed so much, I later called Eileen at her job and she LOVED IT!  

Time has reduced my recollection of most of the specific things that went on or were said, but if you'd heard them by chance, you'd have thought the three of us hated one another, but in the end, it wasn't that way AT ALL! You could NOT have been around us for more than 20 or 30 minutes without leaving with a headache from laughing. I don't care how serious you took life. I kid you not. The awful thing was, we didn't film all of this. But back then, there would not have been a way to get it onto television, as far as I know, because such language would NEVER have been allowed, for one thing. It's a shame, because it would have been a big hit! 

* On the border between the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania is a man made reservoir, called Pymatuning Lake. The lake is part of state parks for both states. On our first trip to Pymatuning, we stopped at a State Trooper office on the way, just to be sure we were not off course. Bill could not say the word, "Pymatuning," which he pronounced as, "Ponatoomie," so when he talked to a State Trooper there, he cautiously asked, "Which way to the lake?" The officer then asked, "Which lake?" (Lake Erie is just north of there.) Now Bill had to say the word, and he said, "Ponatoomie." The officer smiled, but he knew what he meant, and he told us the answer. Well, that started me to calling Bill, "Ponatoomie Bill." He was very temperamental, and that name ticked him off, so I deliberately shortened it to, "Toomie Bill," just to piss him off that much more. Which it did! Hahahahahahaha!

** One of my favorite songs was an Alan Parsons' Project hit from the early 1980s called, "The Eye In The Sky." So, with EI-leen," who many shortened to as if, "Eye," I started calling her, "The Eye In The Sky," which is the name Rocky recognized for her. I'm not kidding.
 
WORD HISTORY:
Correct-The main body of this word, related to a number of words, including "regulate" (a word borrowed by English and of Latin derivation) and "right" (a true English word of Germanic derivation), goes back to Indo European "reg," which meant "to move in a straight line, to guide or to direct." This gave Latin "regere," which meant, "to rule, to lead." The prefix is from Indo European "kom," meaning, "near, with, by," which gave Latin "con-/com-/cor-;" with the variations according to the spelling of the main word, and generally meaning "together," or indicating "completeness." The two parts gave Latin "corrigere," which meant, "to straighten out, to make changes to better something, to make or set right." Its participle form was "correctus" (bettered, improved, proper), and this was borrowed into English in the early 1300s as "correcten" (verb). It wasn't until the mid 1600s that the adjectival form was borrowed from French. By the way, close English relative, German, borrowed the infinitive form "corrigere" directly from Latin in the 1300s, but with the spelling, "korrigieren." As noted above, English borrowed the participle form of that infinitive.