“You know they's lots o' words that's called
fightin' words. Some o' them starts a brawl, no matter who they're spoke to.
You can't call nobody a liar without expectin' to lose a couple o' milk
teeth--that is, if the party addressed has got somethin' besides lemon juice in
his veins and ain't had the misfortune to fall asleep on the Panhandle tracks
and be separated from his most prominent legs and arms. Then they's terms that
don't hit you so much yourself, but reflects on your ancestors and prodigies,
and you're supposed to resent 'em for the sake of honor and fix the speaker's
map so as when he goes home his wife'll say: ‘Oh, kiddies! Come and look at the
rainbow!’" —American short-story writer, sportswriter, and playwright Ring
Lardner (1885-1933), “Three Without, Doubled,” from Gullible's Travels (1917)
In days gone by, “fightin’ words” could get you involved
in a duel (think Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene
Onegin or, closer to home, Hamilton) or
a clan feud (one of the centerpieces of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn). These days, they are regularly lobbed on
Facebook, among longtime friends, and involve politics.
In high school or college, friends would be too busy
partying to care much about religion, the free-enterprise system, or the role
of the government. Now, alone at a computer, unable to break bread, drink it
up, and have some laughs, you can’t believe
what an idiot that guy is.
In one way, I suppose, all that “social distancing”
we have been doing recently might work—we simply have no means to come to blows, let
alone whip out a gun, when someone really, really annoys us. (Years ago, when
two co-workers got into a raging argument, one told me later: “For the first
time in my life, I understood the value of gun control!”)
On the other hand, distance—and, even more so, the
anonymity provided in many parts of the Internet—has encouraged hyperbole and
unreason. In those moments, forbearance is in short supply.
At that point, it’s best to have a laugh—and glory in the fascination with American
slang—displayed by that true original, Ring Lardner (much admired by good friend F. Scott Fitzgerald), in passages like the above.
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