How about this? How about a year every decade to get to go back to college and study something new? Free tuition after forty, leave from work if you're still working. When I run for president, that's going to be my platform.
What I'd study would be linguistics and photography if this were my year.
Photography I've mostly learned by the seat of my pants, with help from Photography for Dummies, but I'd like to learn much more.
Linguistics has always fascinated me, yet I've never actually taken a course in it. Today, driving home from physical therapy I was listening to NPR, as I always do in the car, and I heard a young teacher saying, "I see my students in Publix and I'm like HEY, Y'all! and they're like HEY Miss Porter!"
Lately, I've noticed that in people under fifty or so, LIKE has replaced SAID. I'm curious about that. I know it started back when my kids were younger but I'm not sure about its origin.
Maybe the teachers are picking it up from their high school students?
Maybe it's a way to switch to present tense and suggest that what was said in the past is being said in the present, or an approximation of actual words spoken?
I can imagine a sentence between girls reporting on an encounter with a boy: "I was like hey, I like you!"
"He was like, hey I like you too, but not like that."
On Facebook, we "like" our friends' posts. Businesses ask us to "like us on Facebook."
But what do we do when someone posts something sad--like "My dog died"?
Do we "like" that the poor old cranky dog finally died?
Or do we "like"--as in "I read what you wrote"?
If you'd like to read a fascinating book about language, try James Pennebaker's book, The Secret Life of Pronouns.
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