#1139 Wonderings

Other people go on wanderings. I go on wonderings. Little byroads of curiosity about the many opportunities our culture offers for misunderstanding.
I subtitle my blog “Essays in Human Misunderstanding.” That’s because we so often have these little misfires of perception that lead to confusion. Or at least they do with me. I’m easily confused... and left with a sense of wonder.
Like my friend Rick pointed out the other day as he uttered that unconsciously redundant phrase, “hot water heater.” Why do we say hot water heater? If we heat it, of course the water’s hot. We certainly aren’t going to say cold water heater That sounds dumb.
But you know what? We should say cold water heater, because that’s what we do. We use a heater to heat cold water to make it hot.
“Water heater” is probably best, but it doesn’t sound right, does it? Hot water heater feels good to the tongue. Like “pouring down rain.” We know it will never pour up but we love to accentuate how it pours down by mentioning it.
Or tuna fish sandwich, my old favorite. Of course it’s fish. It’s a tuna. But we don’t say chicken-bird sandwich, do we?
Rick and I also talked about the new trainees they had at a health club for the position of personal trainer. Would that make you a trainer trainee? What if you train people to operate a train? And you’re learning how to do that job. A train trainer trainee?
It sends you off the rails.
Like the other day I was listening to an ad on the radio and the guy was offering to eliminate my debt and he told me to call 1-800-232-DEBT — that’s 1-800-232-D-E-B-T-.
He was very adamant about the spelling and it made me wonder; is his target audience deficient in the spelling department? Some of the folks in credit trouble also having trouble with silent letters?
Have they had a rash of calls to 1-800-232-D-E-T-T-. If so, how would they know? Did they reserve 1-800-232-D-E-T-T- too? Maybe they use that number for their con artist trainees too, before their amateur-ity gets them into hot water.
America, ya gotta love it.