Ordinary Nothing

This bit was started by a radio show I heard on my drive back home from work today. The show was one playing mostly contemporary music by caller’s request, with an overly chirpy host.

This kid called in, and introduced himself.

host: "And how old are you?"
kid: "I’m sixteen"
host: "Oh. And tell me, what do you do when you’re not at school?"
kid: "Study"
host: "What, are you trying to tell me that you actually study even while you’re not at school ?!?!?!"

Good to know how well appreciated education is nowadays. Imagine that, a schoolkid is studying while at home, without a teacher hovering over him! The youth of today… tsk! tsk! Just shocking….

At least the kid had the decency to be embarrassed about it. He immediately started to reply in a highly apologetic tone, explaining that soon there are the end-of-year tests, so he really have to study and doesn’t have a choice.
The radio host seemed somewhat mollified by this, and accepted it as a possibly legitimate excuse. Though I could still hear the lingering doubts in the voice.

On the bright side, a few sentences later I got a new insight. There’s a relatively new figure of speech that became popular in the recent years, despite being totally stupid. Basically, the phrase A Waste of Time (Free translation from the Hebrew "haval al hazman") is being used as a compliment. I didn’t bother to ever check the etymology but I suppose it may have come as a short from saying that something is so good that it’s a waste of time to try and find something better. In any case I really don’t like this phrase in this context, have never used it, and have broken contact with the only friend of mine that started to use it regularly (That’s not the reason, of course. Just seemed like an appropriate place to mention it).

So I pretty much enjoyed it when the kid was offered the opportunity to dedicate the song he asked for. He dedicated it to various classmates, and then told the host that he also wants to dedicate it to this radio show, because it’s really a waste of time.

I think I’m going to use this phrase a lot more now. It has some genuine possibilities. Much better than my school days when I occasionally "complimented" some idiots that they’re so smart they must have a brain as huge as a dinosaur’s.

December 5th, 2004 at 23:04 EET | Categories: Culture | Track comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.