We already have aging photographs, new photographs with complimentary light and angles or just plain photoshop presets, a serious blurring of the lines between GFE and rent-a-hole and now an attempt to disguise illiteracy? Shit, next somebody will be writing NCNS alibis and THEN where will the drama go?
Several things come to mind here. The old saying about teaching someone to fish as opposed to fishing for them, and the one about not trying to teach a pig to sing. Both seem appropriate.
As far as the idiomatic "soft-petal" goes, it's soft-pedal. Unless of course there was some poetic license there about budding illiterate flowers, and if there was, well there's your embedded Whitman romanticism.
If you really want to help, adjunct at a community college or volunteer with a literacy group and help those our educational system has abandoned.
Originally Posted by phildo
Nicely written, Phildo
and you make some helpful suggestions. And nice catch on petal. Nothing quite so inspired as you imagine, though. I saw it reading back over the thread but was too lazy to edit what I'd misspelled.
And you're right. I hate to admit it but if one pays attention it's probably evident that I have a soft (as a petal) side. If your mini-rant about the failures of the educational "system" means you could cry about young adults who are unable to write in their own language wo getting laughed at, I agree.
Here's the rub, however, as I see it: Your solutions sort of look back to the system to get it done. That asks a lot of the system and the one who needs to learn.
It happens other ways, too, my friend. I mean real learning takes place in odd places if at least one person is cognizant of the opportunity and the other says, "Hmm I might could learn something worthwhile here." This is true shit verified by scientists, Phildo. And the neat part is I've seen it work, in instances other than this one.
Stop thinking about it like a cynical hobbyist who's gotten shafted by deceptive ads for a minute (jfred said, playfully) and consider our
respective (been lookin for a chance to use that)
approaches, and which offers more promise, educationally, when presented out of the blue to young hookers.
Your Approach: You notice a terrible incongruence between a young (and probably abandoned by more than one system) black woman's aspirations, on the one hand, and her chances of being more than a joke, on the other. Your response is to chuckle (or sneer, or whatever you would do) and go on to someone who, when she tries to fly, is not a linguistic pig.
However, should the subject come up in a thread on a whore board someday, you'd suggest (in the context of some pretty caustic shit) that she audit college classes or volunteer her time to teach others to read.
My Approach: I notice the same damn thing. My response is my head nearly explodes. (Off the meds, I mentioned that, right?) Uninvited I send her a note that explains what she's up against, and offer to edit her shit. Her response is "Please!" So I do (doesn't take nearly as long as what I'm writing to you) and she changes her blurb and sends me a little note back saying thanks.
Don't make me go into all the pedagogic theory that says my way is better (I'm tempted as it is). And (please!) don't make me try to pretend that it was a big deal and changed her life. (It wasn't and it won't, okay?) But also don't expect me to apologize if some poor excuse of a first-time SD has to settle for fucking her once then looking for another (less porcine-tongued) Shuga Baby.
One should keep his expectations low if avoiding disappointment matters, so I do. But still, anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, if poor's all ya got. My hopeful side wonders if she's thinking, "I gotta learn to write better."
P.S. Abraham, (Which Abraham, please? It makes a difference) WTF dude?