When “I’ll think about it” means “Forget it, whiner”

If you try to convince your parents an excellent family vacation would be going to the far north to see the caribou migration, and they say “We’ll see,” you might suspect that to mean “no.” What if you tell a sibling your parents said “We’ll see,” so maybe they’re open to the idea, and your sibling says “Yeah, right”? Even though “yeah” and “right” are positive words, it probably doesn’t mean they think a trip to the Arctic is happening.

Unofficial word usages happen to adults, too. All the time. Most dictionaries won’t help you interpret these common English word meanings. “Yeah” means “no”? Yeah, no. But now there’s The Evasion-English Dictionary, by Maggie Balistreri, a brilliant little book with hints on when “you” means “I,” when “even though” means “because,” and when “but” means “bullshit.” (We quote from the new Expanded Edition, still quite brief.) She wants us to recognize this dialect and STOP USING IT.

One of the “you = I” examples Balistreri offers is the sentence “You know when you drunk text an ex and look like a fool?” She calls this the “presumptuous you = I,” which denotes “an expectation or nervous hope for reassurance that everyone would have done likewise in the same situation.”

Hmm. “You know how a kid asks for something, and you don’t want them to pitch a fit, so you don’t say no, you just say ‘I’ll think about it’?”

For “even though = because,” here’s a Balistreri sample: “He brought up the same old argument right there over dinner even though he knew it would embarrass me.” Or, “Texas saw an increase in teen pregnancy even though they’ve invested so much in abstinence education programs.”

Balistreri also argues that in some cases “but” is a contraction. Of “bullshit.” Consider “Well I’m really glad you brought that to my attention. I want nothing more than for employees to feel that they can come to me with suggestions for improvement. After all, I consider this organization to be a team, Bu(llshi)t I can’t implement that kind of change at this point in time.”

Or: “You blocked me. I get it. I can take a hint. Bu(llshi)t I just need you to tell me why—what I did wrong. You owe me that much.”

She carefully teases out different uses of “actually”: the hollow victory, the pleasant surprise, the low self-esteem, the damage control, the diplomatic correction, and the self-soother actually. Our favorite of her examples is one of the diplomatic correction variety: “It was my first language, so actually, I’m pretty sure I pronounced it right: broo-sketta.” One of the most horrifying is a self-soother: “I didn’t mean to reply-all but you know, it had to be said. So, in the long run, actually, I’m glad it happened.”

Sorrywatch would love The Evasion-English Dictionary for these helpful distinctions alone, but it turns out she blazes on apologies too.

We love Balistreri on “Sorry if.” She gives examples of tiny sensory stimuli that people are able to detect. “A watch ticking twenty feet away. One teaspoon of sugar dissolved in two gallons of water. A candle burning thirty miles away.”

Then, “We have a sensory threshold for bullshit, too, just enough tick and taste and glow for us to register it on our detectors. It‘s the apology if, as in, ‘I’m sorry if I caused any harm.‘”

Oh yes – people are sensitive to that if. Perhaps we get sensitized to it, developing an allergic response because of times it’s been directed at us.

Balestreri writes, “The apology if doesn’t go unnoticed. The minute it‘s issued, we pounce in a frenzy of ritual rending: ‘If? If? You’re sorry if you hurt anyone?‘ From the specific criticism often comes the more general question: Why are people so bad at apologies?”

Because they want Sorrywatch to have plenty of material? No, that’s not Balestreri’s take. Of public if apologies, she writes, “I don’t know that anyone is bad at apologizing if the apology is a measure of sincerity and compassion. It‘s a pretty accurate revelation of character. Shitty apology from shitty person who did the thing he needs to apologize for: What‘s the wonder? And since ‘I’m sorry if‘… is a much-criticized phrase, its refusal to die points to strategy as a hedge against liability (the lawyer in the ear: ‘Say if and we’ll deny everything‘). It also tosses us a sentence carcass to rend in effigy, a squirt of squid ink to distract us while the apologizer disappears into a treatment center.”

EXCELLENT POINTS! Although we encounter lots of sorry-if in private life, too. We’re not ready to rule out panicky ass-covering from people who are so dismayed by looking bad that they haven’t thought through what they’re saying.

She gives some classic examples.

“I appreciate the overwhelming response to my reference to the Holocaust yesterday and apologize if it offended anyone.”

“Look, first of all, I think this is a misunderstanding. I misspoke. I’m sorry if you took it as an insult.”

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry if you’re mad at me.” (Simple, classic, COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE.)

Balestreri also addresses cases where an apology is followed by “One mistake. Does that make me a bad person?” She gives “[a]n unbelievable quote from Timothy McVeigh’s former Army pal Michael Fortier during the Oklahoma City bombing trial” which “captures this magical belief that the thing you did was not you-you: ‘If you don’t consider what happened in Oklahoma, Tim is a good person.’ If.”

She’s also eloquent about the “superfluous sorry,” where the word is one that “can be deleted with no loss of meaning.”

“I don’t mean to laugh. It’s rude. Sorry, it’s just, that was funny.”

“Sorry! That’s okay, no worries, you didn’t spill much. Anyway, this shirt is so old.”

“Sorry, that’s fucking bullshit.”

Yeah. “Sorry, I don’t want to hear ONE. MORE. WORD. about caribou.”