Letting "awesome" go

I've decided to let go of "awesome." Or at least I've decided to let go of "awesome" as I used to know it. I've done my best to do my part in preserving this word's original meaning, but I knew it was a lost cause when we recently ate lunch at a pub on the Portland waterfront.

Ken and I each ordered the fish and chips special. After we'd told our waitress our choice, she said, "Awesome," turned on her heel, and headed to the kitchen.

Ordering fish and chips is awesome? By whose standards? This was Portland, Maine, folks, where fresh seafood appears on every restaurant menu. If we'd ordered fish and chips on, say, the moon, then maybe that would be awesome, or at least getting what we'd ordered would be awesome. Or if we'd ordered kangaroo meat in Portland, Maine, and actually received it, that might be slightly awesome.

But as I said, this was Portland, Maine.

What once meant "inspiring an emotion of reverence, dread and wonder" now means something somewhere between "mediocre" and "slightly interesting," as near as I can tell. Now a bowl of oatmeal can, apparently, be "awesome." So can a glass of orange juice. Or a sale at the mall. Or...anything really.

So I'll let "awesome" go. RIP, awesome.

I refuse, however, to let go of the following:

1. The pronoun I

I know it has become trendy to say, "Myself and Billy Bob Walter enjoyed the movie. It was awesome."

Myself enjoyed the movie?! I don't think so. I enjoyed the movie. I, I, I. And "me" doesn't work here, either: Me and Billy Bob Walter enjoyed the movie.

No, it's still I, I, I. Me didn't enjoy anything, quite frankly.

2. The possessive form of the pronoun I.

Fred and I's tarantula escaped last night. (Yes, I've actually heard I used this way.)

"I's" tarantula? I don't think so. If my tarantula was caught, though, that's awesome.

3. "Badly" when "bad" is correct. As Lucile Vaughan Payne says so efficiently in The Lively Art of Writing, which was my absolute bible for teaching high school writing for 36 years, "If you feel sick or are unhappy, you feel bad, not badly."

Feeling badly means you're doing a lousy job of running your fingers over something: I tried to feel the soft furriness of the tarantula, but I felt it badly.

What got me going on this rant is actually a television ad that sends both Ken and me (not Ken and I, by the way...sends Ken....sends me...hence, sends Ken and me....) into fits of sputtering each time it comes on. In an ad for car insurance, a lady says she "literally fell out of [her] chair" when the low insurance quotation was given to her. She literally fell out of her chair? I doubt it. I suspect she figuratively fell out of her chair. I've seldom seen anyone fall out of a chair (although my mother did, when I was about 7 or 8. Our family doctor had just given her a shot of cortisone, in her shoulder, and she fainted. Down she went, out of her chair and onto the floor. I thought she'd died before my very eyes.), and I've never seen a person topple over and out when receiving a quotation on car insurance.

My newest gripe in the world of language usage involves another television advertisement, this one for an upcoming home and garden show, to be held at the former Linens 'n' Things store at the Maine Mall. The ad sounds OK if you don't stop to read the screen. There you'll see, big as life, that the show is being held in the space "formally" housed by Linens 'n' Things.

Oh, and there's the Good Shepherd Foodbank in central Maine. Only 50% of the time do the folks who submit this ad to the t.v. stations,...or maybe it's the folks who type the ads that have been submitted to the stations, spell Good Shepherd correctly. Often the name of the foodbank is given as "Good Shepard." Sheep+herder=shepherd. Simple as that.

I know, I know. You think I should find bigger things to worry about. Normally I do, but sometimes I get bothered by the degeneration of the English language. Language, by its very nature (because it's largely oral) is supposed to change over time. It seems to be, though, that it's changing much too quickly lately. And cursive writing? Gone. Or as good as gone. High school students in many schools not only can't write anything in cursive, they can't read anything in cursive, either. I love beautiful cursive writing, but I might as well kiss it good-bye.

I need to go take a walk. The sun's shining, my dog wants to go with me, and my new pedometer just arrived in the mail. Awesome.