On Blatancy

The other night my mom complained about how she wanted to repot a plant and couldn't find a trowel in store after store. Just a small trowel, a simple gardening trowel. She finally found one in Home Depot for all of 99¢, but that was already the fourth place she'd gone to looking for a trowel. A trowel should not be so hard to find.

My thinking is because she kept calling it a "trowel." I just used the word "trowel" five times in the above paragraph. That's what my mom did in relating the story and do you know what I found? The word "trowel" had lost almost all of it's meaning for me. Trowel. Trowel. Trowel trowel trowel trowel. I'm almost at towel. Come on.

Of course no one's going to carry a trowel. Why are you calling it that? It's got other, much more common names. If you asked for a little shovel, even the guy who doesn't speak English will have a shot at understand you. "¿Un shovel [digging pantomime] pequño?" Sure. But a trowel? Come on, he won't know that one. Help a guy out; pick an other name.

Until I heard it on network television,
I thought "calling a spade a spade" derogatory of black people.

Please, people, let's call a spade a spade.


*cricket chirp*