Oh my petty annoyances...


I enjoy listening to “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross on NPR on my daily commute home. The wide ranging subjects and the typically articulate speakers are a delightful and stimulating interlude. One program earlier this week interviewed the two authors of “Bang Bang”, a story about the hazards and hardships of investigative reporting in war zones.

Listening away I was caught up in the telling by one author until I kept hearing “you know” in just about every sentence. I found myself counting “you know” and lost the thread of the story. (This counting is an annoying habit formed during my Lamaze training.) I found myself waiting for the next “you know” until I couldn’t take another “you know” and changed the radio station.

My daughter developed the lazy speech pattern of “you know” which drove me to distraction. We two were together practically every moment during a four-week trip when the “you know” phrase broke me. I began consistently replying “Yes I do know” and by the end of the trip my girl was so annoyed with me that she quit using that phrase.

My big fear is, you know, that I’ll begin, you know, interjecting, you know, into my speech. You know?

Comments

Janice said…
I know; this bugs me too.
Sun Apr 24, 03:27:00 PM
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