The quick run on a rainy morning to get T2 to the station.
(as we exit the house)
T1: I’m really very annoyed with that farmer in West Australia.
T2: Why?
T1: I will never again be able with a clear conscience to say all jet-ski owners are wankers*.
(sundry vehicular miscellany)
T1: I made a conscious decision to take this turn (reviving a long standing debate about which route gets us to the station just that bit sooner) because the lights just changed.
T2: I didn’t say anything!
T1: I just wanted you to know I’d thought about taking the other turn.
T2: Noted and acknowledged. (beat) Wait, that’s a tautology isn’t it?
T1: Yeeeeeees, except if you switched the order it might not be, because you can acknowledge something without actually noting it.
T2: True. Something I, of course, would never ever do.
T1: There must be some grammarian term for pairs of words that are chronologically dependent like that.
T2: Like how you can say “measured and cut” but “cut and measured” is nonsense?
T1: Yep. (beat) TARDIL.
T2: TARDIL?
T1: Time And Relative Dimensions In Language.
T2: (grin) [around about here an inferior* jargon suggestion that I can't remember was offered] But then a strict grammar of such word pairs means that you’re implying a definitive relationship between cause and effect.
T1: Are you arguing that there isn’t any empirical structure of causes and effects?*
T2: Some philosophers have argued so.
T1: (considered judgement) Those philosophers are wankers****.
T2: Yeah, I reckon so too.
(arrive at station, cutting off further discussion of the futile endeavours of most philosophers to impress the really cool people at parties)
Notes:
* This post owns the distinction of requiring me to add ‘wankers’ to the spellcheck dictionary in order to not have any nasty red underlines in my draft/editing window. I can’t believe that it’s taken this long.
** Some phraseology in the transcript above may have been somewhat buffed and polished in the authorial recollection.
*** Its intrinsic inferiority is clearly indicated by my inability to remember it, surely?
**** See, the second iteration had no nasty red underline, so taking the clicks to add the word to the spellcheck dictionary was Totally So Worth It.
I’m not sure whether I should be reassured or unnerved to find that there are other households that have conversations like ours…
Deborahs last blog post..A meme of fives
One of us! One of us! One of us!