Thoughts of LoWriter

Never, Always, and Other Frequently Used Phrases of the Weak Minded

I hate the words always and never, as in "You always do thus and such" or "You never do this and that." These phrases are the argumentative equivalent of Jello: Jiggly, transparent, and easy to poke holes through. They are a clear indication that, much like Jello, your arguement cannot stand up under pressure. Your arguement is weak.

Are you losing your latest fight? Just pull out an always or a never, and you won't have to comment on the issue at hand at all. Maybe you can even use both in one sentence. "Oh yeah, well you never put gas in the car, and you always expect me to take care of it." You can easily wiggle out of any sticky situation by placing blame back on the opposite party by expressing exactly how often they do or do not do something that irritaties you, i.e., all the time.

We all do it. I had to edit a few out of here, even. But it mostly bothers me when someone does it while arguing with me. I bring this up because my sister and I had a fight, and she peppered every point with these words. One portion of this fight went down like this.

"Well, people always do nice stuff for you!" she said.

"Always, huh. When was the last time you did something nice for me?" I aksed.

"I always do nice stuff for you. There was that one time when you were stressed about cooking and I got you groceries [which actually means she picked me up a jar of olive oil]."

"Oh, would that have been the time in February? So two and a half months ago you did something nice for me?"

"Well, you never return my phone calls because you're always with Ben," and so forth.

And it wouldn't bother me so much except it's completely false. Ben and I are on completely different schedules. He works nights, and I work days. The one day we get unlimited time together is Saturday night. Otherwise, I am rushing home from work, and he is rushing off to work. Saturday is date night. Then we see each other one or two nights during the rest of the week, and that's it. And it isn't like when you go to someone's house at 5 in the evening and leave at 2 in the morning. Usually, it's 5 or 6 before I can see him at night (which will get worse in the summer when I start working ten, four hour days), and he has to leave my house by 9 or 9:30. Call me a whiner, but it feels like we don't see nearly enough of each other.

And that is the one thing that is completely my fault. I took on a lot of proofreading, so my freetime is again extremely limited. Call me crazy, but I want to be debt free in two years. The original goal, last year, was three years. Maybe I should plan for three from today's date, but I'm aiming for two, and we'll see how it goes.

Then there's my recent Battlestar Galactica addiction, which basically means I am not working very hard, either. I will need to stop playing around in the afternoon and get serious.

Sometimes, I'd like it if my family would cut me some slack. They think I should take care of myu youngest sister because she's younger, but I can't be her mom. Frankly, she needs to grow up, or she will always be living on my couch eating corn pops and never paying any rent. Sometimes, I feel like I'm doing the best I can, and everybody should just chill.

So if you're going to use always and never, say something like "You always take on too much and you never think about the consequences." Or "You're always worried about that debt, so you can never just relax." That, at least, has more evidence to support it.

Posted by LoWriter at May 4, 2007 10:19 AM