Cleaning up our Language

I remember trying to learn HTML on my own, back when the public schools were just inching onto the technology bubble. In need of a little job security, I had convinced East to add a Webpage Publishing class before I actually knew how to publish anything on the web.

Guess what I spent my summer learning that year?

In a weird way, my first exposure to HTML--an unforgiving language, indeed--came to mind this morning as I got up the courage to turn on the radio and listen in a bit as people tried to explain yesterday's horrific events.  Most of their explanations felt a bit hollow, in part, because they were offering them in the wrong language.  And I suspect more than a few teachers could have told them so.

Teach long enough and you'll bump into a kid who is utterly confounding, one for whom rules and consequences are as foreign as HTML was to me 15 years ago.  Yet, we confound our professional psyches  all the more by using the wrong measuring sticks--the wrong language--to explain or take apart that abhorrent behavior.

"What kind of normal person would do THAT?!" we sputter.

Well, not a one, probably.  And that's the point.  This is not normal behavior, so we might as well throw out all the norms, standards and practices if we want to find a meaningful solution.

So, what do we do when "normal" doesn't fit anymore?  Well, for starters, we do what we do when our jeans don't fit anymore.  We set them aside and get to work again.  We remind ourselves of the basics--those things that we all need and share--and look for the gaps in our current practices.

We start addressing hunger, for instance.  And mental illness.  We start to set aside our obsessive refusal to pay more for the right to live in this country, and begin to funnel our time and money into meaningful, substantial changes in the way we do things.  We throw out the hollow "bottom line" for something more apropos for humanity--like compassion and teamwork, dignity and doing what's right.

And, since I'm dreaming here, we shrink the airwaves just a wee bit and give less time to gasbags like Rush Limbaugh and 24-hour news networks and build in some pauses between our storytelling.  I mean, honestly, what do we really get by staring into that box, nonstop, or injecting the vitriol into our ears and veins over and over and over again?

I'd say we get what we got yesterday--a whole lot of heartbreak with a rush of goodwill on its backside.