Basketball used to be a thing for me, along with all sorts of other sports. But I quit playing basketball competitively after high school. As a point guard, one thing I tried to avoid was the double-dribble.
That is the illegal activity when a player dribbles the ball with two hands simultaneously, or they continue to dribble after allowing the ball to come to rest in one or both hands. The old double-dribble.
These days, the meaning has changed. It happens when I miss my mouth slightly with my coffee cup, and then, in an act of overcompensation, I do it again. The double-dribble and I have a mess on the kitchen table.
Meanings change. Life will shift this way or that, and suddenly words don’t represent what they used to mean.
We saw this, especially with the computer revolution.
The only keyboard we had growing up was attached to our upright piano in our basement. Now they extend way past our computers and appear places like our on our phones and TVs — even our refrigerators. Keyboards are everywhere.
And then. If we had a mouse in our house, we set a trap with a little bit of cheese therein.
And applications were something we filled out if we wanted a job. Now, we download applications that do anything from playing solitaire to counting calories to paying our bills.
I never thought I would be saying such a thing, but I have dongles. All sorts of dongles, depending on the output device. I can’t bring myself to shop for them at Best Buy or anywhere else, as I absolutely will not ask someone where they keep their dongles. I have to buy my dongles — covertly — online.
One term that has come full cycle is the virus. For all our lives, it meant someone was sick with the flu. Then, it turned into a computer nightmare. Today, with the pandemic, we know the word virus again as it was originally used. Unfortunately.
But the different meanings don’t make something right or wrong. We have double meanings all over the place.
Jam could be something you spread on your toast in the morning as you are double dribbling your coffee. Or it could be the thing you are stuck in, while driving your car to work. We even jam clothes into suitcases or clear a jam out of printers. Of course, every single one of us has been in a terrible jam at one time or another.
Oh, I don’t know. Speaking of double-dribbling and getting into jams, I certainly have noticed the news cycle lately. I was just reflecting on how refreshing it is not to have a daily catastrophic event coming from the White House. How pleasant it is not to hear the constant pecking from the Potus Twitter pulpit. It feels good not to hear our president talk about horrible, evil, stupid Americans on a daily basis.
But, as with phrases and meanings, there are two sides. I am sure there are a lot of people who miss that daily barrage of negativity.
I’m just not one of them.
Besides all of that, I hope that eventually, I can get back around using the actual directional tools in my life without even thinking about political parties. You know, my right and my left.
Do I turn left up ahead, or do I turn right? And so on.
Those directions, one way or the other, will take me to a different place.
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“There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
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“Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?”
― Garth Nix, Sabriel
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“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading”
― Siddhārtha Gautama
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Say what you mean, or mean what you say.
