So, its been brought to my attention that calling the baby shower gifts "crap" might come across as extremely ungrateful and belittling to those who provided us with the wonderful and most generous gifts that were given to us, for which we are very happy to receive and which have made the reality that we're going to be parents all the more vivid. Allow me to iterate that this was not my intent and to anyone offended by my poor choice of words at 11:30PM, my apologies. To me, "crap" is idiomatically used in our day as synonymous to "stuff" or "things" or "items" and need not necessarily carry any negative or pejorative connotation.
Nonetheless, such an example of confusion and misunderstanding that can occur in language - even within the same language which all those who read my blog have been educated and utilize in their everyday lives - bears testament to the fact that philosophers like Derrida, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and others need to be granted a hearing. We do not instantly understand one another; rather, everything involves interpretation, which makes charity all the more important when interacting with and speaking to one another.
Solitude Pre Listen!
4 years ago
4 comments:
you can tell your wife, I wasn't offended by the term crap (although none of the gifts were from me). But had they been, I would not have been offended. I am glad your paper went so well!
Your friendly thesaurus would like to offer up her three favorite "crap/stuff" words as other alternatives:
paraphernalia
kachi-bachi (quechua)
prutz (dutch)
kachi-bachi and prutz definitely hold "crap"esque connotations, but no one else knows that... or, at least, they didn't before they read this comment.
Renee, you made me laugh out loud at work. Then a co-worker said, "I love your random outbursts of laughter." Hm... i'll have to come up with ways to add "kachi-bachi" to my everyday conversation...
this cracked me up. I didn't think a thing of it, mostly because when you get so much "stuff" you don't know what to do with sometimes "crap" just describes it best. And crap is not at all synonymous with "garbage" or "junk" in that sense!
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