Ruminations

So let me set the scene for you.  It was relatively early (think 6ish, not 4ish) one morning last week, and I found myself in the same place that I’d found myself the few mornings before; namely at the gym, on a treadmill.  Not running, I might add.  I have a hate/loathe relationship with running.  It awakens the wrath of some bone spurs in my ankles and wrecks havoc on a knee that has already spent more time in a brace than it properly should.  It’s been torn up twice, third time I’m guessing will send me off to a surgeon.  I’m not a big fan of surgeons.  Well… no, I take that back, surgeons are ok, it’s the surgery that I’m not a big fan of.  Except for the anesthesia.  There’s something frighteningly intriguing about being put under to me.  I’m figuring it’s as close to dying as a person can get without going over the line entirely, so I figure I’ve almost-died three times.  That doesn’t include all the times my folks were ready to throttle me when I was growing up. 

Where was I?  Ah.  The gym.  The local gym has those treadmills with the small LCD television screens attached to the top so those of us who are walking/running on them have their own little screen to watch, rather than staring up at the big screen on the wall, gazing out the window or (heaven forbid) speaking to each other.  Personally, I like to find a treadmill near one of the big TVs on the wall so if I get bored with one screen I have a second to fall back to (because, as I mentioned before, you’re not allowed to talk to anyone except maybe the guy at the front desk, and that’s just to say hello.  Briefly.).  Now, while the sound from the big screens on the wall can just barely be heard over the plodding feet upon the treadmills, generally the small LCD televisions on the machines have the volume turned down, and the broadcast is close captioned.  Which is fine; I also tend to wear headphones while I’m working out, so I can’t really hear the television(s) anyway. 

So I’m tromping along on my treadmill, watching the local news broadcast to the soothing tunes of the Black Crowes, when the broadcast shifts over to the morning traffic report.  Generally I would turn to the other television at this point; I work out of my house, so traffic reports mean very little to me.  I glance up at the big television and sigh; for some reason they’ve tuned it in to some sort of infomercial.  Infomercials by themselves I find to be a little odd.  Infomercials without sound is a bit like crossing an ancient rain dance with some Nazi rally footage from the 30s; you can tell that they’re all worked up about something, but the longer you watch the more you become convinced that someone’s going to get a little roughed up if someone doesn’t put a stop to it. 

With a mental shrug I turned my attention back to the traffic report, watching the words in the black boxes pop up magically on the screen.  Fender-bender on some on-ramp on I-65.  Trailer truck turned sideways on I-40, two lanes blocked.  And then this pops up:

“SO FAR, NO INTESTINES REPORTED THIS MORNING ON I-24.”

No… intestines?   “Well that’s a relief,” I murmured to myself.  Hate to see all those intestines on the road as you make your way to work… really sets a dark mood for the rest of the day.    

Languages are fascinating things.  Did you know that, even though we use a combination of consonants and vowels to build words that convey a thought, our brains still operate on the general principle of image recognition?  Our brains don’t see the individual letters of a word, it sees the “picture” the word forms and recalls its meaning.  This is why we have to pause when reading words like country and county, because the “picture” each word forms is so close that the brain can easily confuse one for the other.  It is also why we can typically understand the meaning behind something that has been misspelled; as long as it’s relatively close, our brain compensates for the missing letters.  Sometimes it does this without us even noticing. 

Which is why we all know that the closed captioning for the traffic report should have read “so far, no INCIDENTS reported this morning on I-24.” 

… then again, there is a certain punch to using the word INTESTINES in that sentence.  And if you think about it, it certainly gets the point across.

Either way, be safe out there.