A Wall Street Journal article about the ongoing pain experienced by the parents of Nico Edwards, a teen who survived last year's Parkland, Florida shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, included the following admission from his mother: Before he gets out of the car when she drops Nico off at school each morning, "I make sure I say, 'I love you.'"
This brings to mind two questions: First, didn't she say it each time before the shooting occurred? Next, does saying that make her feel there will be no shooter at the school that day, or if there is and her son is shot, that her words will protect him? I said it to my own son all the time, and he still got into a ton of trouble growing up, so it's certainly no insurance policy.
More interesting is how saying "I love you" has become the #1 expression
of affection in our society, applied to anything and everything with
equal fervor. Just like certain bad words cannot be spoken, the L-word is uttered about a million times a day by just about everyone who can talk and in most TV commercials. I am guilty of this for sure; following is a list of
just a few of the things and people I absolutely love:
Blueberries
My son
My husband
My cousin Brian
Tommy Lee Jones
Ethan Frome
Spring peepers
Thriller
Michael Jackson
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Bread
Living in Maine
The Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle
Helen Mirren in The Queen
Landing safely and getting the hell off an airplane
Watching a live performance of Our Town
Losing weight
Finding typos in the newspaper or (even better) a book
Chianti
My true friends
Venice, Italy
My art
Bonfire of the Vanities
White Noise
Queen
Freddie Mercury
My hot tub
Blogging
Sleeping
Coffee
Anchovy pizza
The ocean
Playing Words With Friends
Nathan's French fries
Ringo's drum solo on Carry That Weight
Oldies on the radio
Taking showers
Reruns of old sitcoms
Karen and Jack on Will & Grace
Autumn
My cat
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Oatmeal
Lorazepam
Larry David
This brings to mind two questions: First, didn't she say it each time before the shooting occurred? Next, does saying that make her feel there will be no shooter at the school that day, or if there is and her son is shot, that her words will protect him? I said it to my own son all the time, and he still got into a ton of trouble growing up, so it's certainly no insurance policy.
More interesting is how saying "I love you" has become the #1 expression
of affection in our society, applied to anything and everything with
equal fervor. Just like certain bad words cannot be spoken, the L-word is uttered about a million times a day by just about everyone who can talk and in most TV commercials. I am guilty of this for sure; following is a list of
just a few of the things and people I absolutely love:Blueberries
My son
My husband
My cousin Brian
Tommy Lee Jones
Ethan Frome
Spring peepers
Thriller
Michael Jackson
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Bread
Living in Maine
The Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle
Helen Mirren in The Queen
Landing safely and getting the hell off an airplane
Watching a live performance of Our Town
Losing weight
Finding typos in the newspaper or (even better) a book
Chianti
My true friends
Venice, Italy
My art
Bonfire of the Vanities
White Noise
Queen
Freddie Mercury
My hot tub
Blogging
Sleeping
Coffee
Anchovy pizza
The ocean
Playing Words With Friends
Nathan's French fries
Ringo's drum solo on Carry That Weight
Oldies on the radio
Taking showers
Reruns of old sitcoms
Karen and Jack on Will & Grace
Autumn
My cat
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Oatmeal
Lorazepam
Larry David
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