Terrified?

Terrified?

A cranky opinion for

CRANKY OPINION SATURDAY

The following is the opinion of a cranky old man who never got higher than a “C” in English class.  Opposing opinions are welcome, but they are wrong.  As always, please, no name calling, and that means you, you big stupid-head!

TERRIFIED-  To fill with terror; make deeply afraid

Please don’t turn this opinion into a political comment.  I am just tired of hearing the word TERRIFIED. 

No one is just nervous anymore.  Nobody claims to be concerned.  People are no longer simply scared, no, today everyone is TERRIFIED.

We are TERRIFIED of politicians.  We are TERRIFIED of who is in our bathrooms.  We are TERRIFIED of altered food, of the weather, of Muslims, of Christians, of anti-Semitism, and race problems.  We are TERRIFIED of the police and we are TERRIFIED of the flu.

I watch the “Bachelor,” a reality TV show where 24 women compete for one man.  Every friggin woman on that show is TERRIFIED that they won’t get a rose and will be sent home heartbroken because they won’t be marrying a man they met three days ago. 

TERRIFIED I tell you!

It weakens a perfectly good word.  A word that used to describe what someone felt like when stalked by a great white shark in the ocean.  A word that conveys the feeling the victim of an armed robbery has.  If I barely avert a truck driving the wrong way down the Turnpike how do I now explain how I might have felt?

“It was TERRIFYING!”

“So, you were concerned?”

“No, it was really TERRIFYING!”

“Oh, so you were nervous?”

“I was really fucking TERRIFIED!”

“You were scared then?”

“TERRIFIED!!! What don’t you get about the word…Terrified…pissed my pants, crapped my drawers, talked to GOD and prayed for my life TERRIFIED!”

I wish people would stop watering down the language.  "Awesome" no longer means inspiring great admiration, now it just means “Good.”

 “This pizza is awesome.”  Really? Does a slice of pizza inspire great admiration?

And you can’t use the words “epic” or “legendary” to express great admiration, they just mean “special.”

To properly express great admiration now, something is “Friggin awesome” or “Mother-friggin awesome”, or “really mother-friggin awesome.” 

You used to be able to properly emphasize a word by declaring it is “Actually” awesome, or “Actually” TERRIFYING, but currently everything is “actually” something.

“What kind of car do you drive?”

“I actually drive a Toyota.”

ACTUALLY? Really? Is the Toyota “awesome?”

The way we are diluting our language these days terrifies me.

The preceding was actually the opinion of a cranky old man and not necessarily that of management, the epically awesome Mrs. Cranky.