Friday, January 11, 2008

Conversations with Hubby

So I was speaking with my husband via instant messenger this morning, and the conversation went like this:

Val says:
hey sweets
John says:
hey Babe
Val says:
howzit going
John says:
not too bad
Val says:
good
Val says:
I'm trying to talk myself into getting on the treadmill but it's almost noon
Val says:
so I'm thinking not
Val says:
OK bed time tonight is 9:30pm I can't get jack out of these slugs
Val says:
me being one of the slugs
John says:
I'm running on pure caffeine
Val says:
Micah won't make lunch, Josh was in chat sans shower
Val says:
I'm sitting here in a tank top watching reruns of You Can't Do That on Television and finding it REALLY hard to breathe in and out without complaining about it
John says:
Chat sans shower?
Val says:
so yeah... I'm sure you're much worse off, I slept til 8:45
Val says:
Josh was chatting in cafejesus, without having had a shower
Val says:
I'm sure they don't mind but I do
John says:
sans?
Val says:
sans = without
Val says:
french preposition
Val says:
and ironically a member of a traditionally nomadic hunting people of southwest Africa
John says:
showoff
Val says:
sure they don't take showers either
John says:
You're too funny

(Let me just add that we went to bed last night at 1am because Josh, Micah, Sarah (Micah's friend), Jackie (Josh's friend), John, and I were playing yahoo graffiti and literati and there wasn't a grown-up around to tell us to go to bed)

So I'm just wondering, does anyone use "sans" any more? I remember reading it for the first time in some book and wondering what it meant. So I looked it up and WOW! What a neat word! I found every excuse I could think of to slip that little gem into my speech. But being in Alabama, I basically ended up with some strange looks. I didn't want to be branded as "high falutin'..." So I let that one slide out of my vocabulary as slyly as I had worked it in.

I sometimes ponder what kind of impact the internet, instant messenger, text messaging and the like have on the English language. I'm sure sometime in the future, when my 13-year-old daughter is president, people will be saying TTFN and LOL out loud, in public. *GROAN* Yes, on the internet, people cannot see your expression or hear your tone, and you do have to elaborate on those things via text. However, when I am sitting in a restaurant with my friends, I would really hate for one of them to pipe up, "OMG! Did you see what that girl was wearing? IMHO, she should have skipped the legwarmers, LOL! IIRC, legwarmers went out in the 80s!" I wonder if we'll just carry around little keyboards and have some kind of scrolling text over our heads.
So sans, I mourn your loss of use along with all the great words that no one uses any more, such as spat, or thrice, or legwarmers...