Going Nucular

What do George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Indiana Jones have in common? Nucular.

In the latest Indiana Jones opus, the lead character utters the word nucular during a conversation. That blew the entire movie for me. Why? Because there is no such word. It’s a mispronunciation of the word nuclear. Indy would have had enough education and credentials to know better, especially in the day in which he lived.

I made an online inquiry about nucular and found that it is listed on Wikipedia, being there described as the incorrect pronunciation of nuclear and in increasing colloquial use. The mispronunciation is and has been used by intelligent and educated people; politicians, presidents and a well-known cartoon character. It is recorded as an ad hoc spelling and will ultimately end up in the dictionary and on Wikipedia as a real word. It will then be official. With such widespread misuse, the wrong word will be accepted as the right word. 

Obviously, no one has made the effort to correct those who mispronounce nuclear. Nucular is now acceptable because those who know better have done nothing.

This process of the unacceptable becoming acceptable through increasing use is also how our ethics, morals and behaviors are degraded. Where there is no correction, the unacceptable slowly and surely becomes acceptable, what is right is devalued and we don’t notice or care. When no one stands against misuse or abuse – pointing it out, providing correction and training in what is right – wrong things are perceived as being right. Evil replaces good and good is corrupted and no longer recognized or practiced.

A Hard Lesson From Softball

 

I live across from a community park where I often walk my dogs. Last weekend the softball fields and warm-up areas were activated by girls of various ages batting, throwing and catching; and parents watching, eating and yelling. A regional tournament was in full swing.

While I lingered to watch a few innings, I reminisced back to when my daughter played on these same fields and I managed and coached her teams. I remember the practices, the drills, the trips to the batting cages, the girls’ competitiveness and the parents’ cliques. On top of that there was the important goal of being selected for the all-star team or a travel team, which conferred an elite status on the players who made it. Between rec ball, all-stars and travel ball, a girl could conceivably play softball year round.

I remembered the parents who encouraged and those who complained. One the one hand there was the dad whose daughter didn’t make the all-star team that year and who verbally attacked me for the better part of an hour, accusing me of ruining his girl’s chances to play high school ball which could lead to a college scholarship. On the other hand there was the dad who coached with me for three seasons and overlooked no player. Ours was the most unified team one year and we won the league trophy.

Each spring was given over to all things softball: practices, games, planning, snack shack schedules, weather reports, field maintenance, team sleepovers… It all seemed so vital to the formation of happy, well-rounded kids.

It’s all so entirely unimportant to me now. I do and I don’t miss those days on the ball fields. The point was to have fun, to build skills, friendships, discipline and character in our kids. The actuality also consisted of strife, scheming and gossip. All that time, effort and money we spent… was it worth it?

This is what I know: We parents have good intentions in enrolling our kids into extracurricular activities. And then we sit on the sidelines or in the audience to watch them succeed and fail. We stop participating, leaving it up to coaches like me to form good character and marketable skills in our kids. But character is formed in the home and then brought to the ball field.

My daughter, who never once played on the all-star team, opted for water polo during high school and is now serving as a United State Marine. We play catch when she’s home on leave.

What of the daughter of the ranting father? She was good enough to be picked for the high school JV team as a freshman but stopped playing altogether the following year. I was saddened to subsequently read about her in the police blotter in our local newspaper.

The important thing about training our kids is what happens at home, not at home plate.

Limits, Laws and a Lament

I was chatting with a friend who is temporarily residing in another state where she is not yet familiar with the rules of the road and speed limit signs are not clearly posted. As such, she found herself pulled over by a state trooper for speeding (her first moving violation ever.)

She lamented to me about how she missed driving in California, where there is a posted highway speed and then there’s the understood policy about driving as fast as is safe given the flow of traffic. People exceed the freeway speed limits all the time in California and can go for years or for a lifetime without being cited.

I pointed out that, although people drive with the flow of traffic, any speed over the posted limits is breaking the law. If the posted limit is 65 mph and the driver is clocking 66 mph, the driver is breaking the law, technically.

My friend disagreed, saying that few people get pulled over for going 70 mph or more. “No one drives sixty-five on the freeway in California unless they’re ninety-two and a half years old or driving an eighteen-wheeler fully loaded or it’s pouring rain, and even then it’s iffy.”

I agreed with her comment, but then reiterated that the posted limit is the law, and the enforcement agencies give us a lot of grace by looking the other way most of the time. But if we’re driving faster than what’s allowed, we are breaking the law, whether or not we are caught. The citing does not mean we’ve broken the law, it’s simply one of the consequences.