Soft and Shrinkable

I am still alive. That is just in case you were wondering. Going only by this blog you may have thought that I had died a while back. I am very glad to say that for you to assume I had died makes you an idiot. I don't cotton to idiots.

How does one cotton to something? Is that the right phrase, "I don't cotton to this or that action?" I wonder what it means? Yes, from context I know what it means, but I wonder why it means what it means and how it came to mean what it means and why we allow it to continue to mean what it means.

Is cottoning something that people can do? Maybe it originated in the deep south, you know, the land of cotton. I'm told that good times there are not forgotten. Maybe cottoning is not forgetting the good times and therefore cottoning to something is associating it with good times. By that logic, not cottoning to something could mean that the thing that is uncottoned to is associated with bad times. Bad times have no place way down south in Dixie.

Of course bad times have had a place way down south in Dixie. What with the slave trade and all. Not to mention the curious use of the nonexistent word, "Y'all." Do we really need a contraction that means you all? In stead of saying "y'all come back now. Ya hear?" We could instead say, "return." In fact, the word return was built for the very purpose of asking things to come back. I guess, technically, we would have to add something to return to cover the "y'all," "now," and "ya hear." So really we probably should say, "Everyone return immediately. Understood?"

Of course, even Southerners with their undeniable hospitality don't want people to come back immediately so we should probably change that to "at some point." and Y'all does imply a group. So what we really would have to say is, "Everyone, return as a group at some point. Understood?" Whoops, better throw a please in there and an attention getter.

"Everyone, attention please. Please return as a group at some point. Understood?"

Shoot. I don't like the "please. Please" nor do I like the "understood?" as it's own sentence. Let's try it again,

"Please, everyone, your attention! Kindly return as a group at some point. Do you understand?"

Crud. The "do you understand?" sentence sounds condescending I had better put the owness of comprehension back on me. Maybe something like,

"Please, everyone, may I have your attention? Will each of you kindly return to this place as a group at some point? Now, for my benefit, would someone please repeat to me what I just said so that I can gauge whether or not I made my purpose known with the words I chose to speak?"

See, that is so much more clear.

Practice it in a southern accent. So charming.