Its a "Thing" Thing

I mean, like… ya know, uh, huh, well ah! I’ve spent years either eliminating those phrases from my own speech or ignoring them from my younger generational friend’s talk. When I’m grasping for just the right word or phrase I’ve learned to just be silent for second or two and it will come to me. That is, most of the time it will come to me.

I now seem to have picked up a different speech impediment, aka memory burp. It is one unique to us sixtyish+ folks. You see, I am still leaving those “uhs and ahs” out of my sentences but my pauses seem to be getting longer when I’m searching for a word (if I could only overclock my Pentium II mind and just Google it in a few nanoseconds or so)

Sometimes my pauses are embarrassingly long and I must make do with the catch-all word “thing”. Here’s an example. “Dear, did you pick up my (pause, pause) thing today”? Of course as soon as I said “thing” I knew I wanted to say “dry cleaning”.

That “thing” word is pretty versatile. It can be used for just about anything (no pun intended). “Where’s the tire (pause, pause) thing (i.e. pump)”, or “I’ll put the food in the (pause, pause) thing (i.e. microwave) later”. You get the idea.

But it does get uncomfortable if I use “thing” too often. After all, I don’t want people to think I’m getting (pause – wait, whew, I know) oldtimers, I mean Alzheimer’s. My mother stayed quite sharp and alert as she aged, but still some words would escape her momentarily so she would use the pause and thing trick. She also used a remarkable technique to remember something special. She would move her wristwatch to her right wrist – simple as that. Later in life, if she had two important things to remember she would switch the watch and put a rubber band on the left wrist. I don’t have that problem because I have those (pause, pause) things (i.e. sticky notes).

Perhaps I will start using some of those unlearned words and phrases again. This will give me more time to think. I bet I could delay my speech by three pauses and nobody would be the wiser.

I think I’ll sign off now and work on the, uh, uh, ah, Blog (hah, remembered it) another day.