Have you ever taken an opportunity? People do it all the time. They say, “I’d like to take this opportunity to…” In addition to being taken opportunity is capable of knocking. “When opportunity knocks…” An opportunity is also something you shouldn’t miss. “Don’t miss this opportunity to…” Some opportunities are seldom seen. “This is a rare opportunity to…..” You can also seize an opportunity which seems overly aggressive to me especially as you can simply take one. Why seize when you can take? Of course some opportunities are “once in a lifetime.”
In addition to opportunities, you can also seize a day. You know, as in carpe diem. But has anyone ever told you that they seized a day? “How was your day, Ralph?” “Great, I totally seized it.” Wonder what it’s like to seize a day? What does it entail? I don’t understand the mechanics of it. I’m not even sure of the purpose of seizing a day.
Seize and siege are very similar words. Switch the two vowels and choose between a g and a z. They’re not totally unrelated words either. When an invading army tries to seize a city they often face a siege. In other words an attempt to seize led to a siege. But to not a sneeze which is a totally unrelated word (it rhymes, though) but has no letter I in it. And why won’t my computer let me type a lower case I all by itself? Maybe there’s a way to do but my laptop keeps making it upper case which is fine if you’re writing about yourself as in: “I can’t seem to type a lower case I by itself and I find this aggravating.”
I learned the word aggravating from Jackie Gleason (you kids will have to look him up). He was doing a stand up bit on his weekly variety show about things that are aggravating. I don’t recall how old I was other than I wasn’t old enough to fully understand the word aggravating. For some reason there was no adult around to consult. Did I look up aggravating in the dictionary? Didn’t need to. Figured it out from context clues. That’s how we learn most words. Take it from me, I teach the English language for a living to people from other countries.
Imagine that we call our jobs what we do “for a living.” That seems pretty damn serious. You work to live. I mean I suppose that in some cases you do. You don’t work, you don’t have any money and you starve or die of exposure. I always found: “what do you do for a living?” A strange question. Weirder yet is when people abbreviate it by asking, “what do you do?” Well, sir, I do one helluva lot of things. Doesn’t everybody? We define people by their jobs. He’s a carpenter, she’s a fashion designer, he’s an accountant, she’s a pharmacist. Is that all we are? You can also say someone’s a Democrat or a Conservative or a Catholic or a drug addict or a Giants fan or jerk or a bitch or user or a sagittarius or Gen Xer or a stamp collector (philatelist). One word can define a person for a lot of people. In truth one word can convey a lot — like racist — but it’s mostly, even in the case of racists, one part of who a person is. (I was taught not to end sentences with an auxiliary verbs, but screw it, it’s like you’re not supposed to end a sentence a preposition with.)
I mention being Gen X in the preceding paragraph (you can look it up). You’ve also got your Gen Zs and your millennials not to mention your baby boomers. I hate this crap. It’s another way of classifying people, usually stereotyping them. “Oh you’re a Gen Z so you probably….” Or, “He’s Gay so he probably….” Or “She’s African American so she probably…” Or worse, “he’s a typical….” Why strip away people’s individuality, put them in a box, assume a person feels one way or another because of when they were born or what color they are or who they sleep with? Is Bob over there a Gen Xer, an Aquarius, non-binary, a college student. Or is Bob simply a person who I haven’t gotten to know and I refuse to make any assumptions about? Bob maybe isn’t a typical anything, maybe he’s just good ole Bob.
A few paragraphs up I said that something happened “for some reason.” We use that one a lot. In truth every fucking thing happens “for some reason.” I had written that “for some reason” there was no adult around. Why did I do that? Obviously it’s used to convey the fact that the writer or speaker has no frickin’ idea why something was the case. I don’t recall why I was alone watching The Jackie Gleason Show when it was a family show. I guess using “for some reason” isn’t the worst sin in the world but it still seems weird — for some reason.
Okay for some reason I’m going to take this opportunity to conclude this blog post. I guess that’s just typical of a Baby Boomer, socialist, Pieces, Arsenal supporter, Berkeley native.
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