Words

It’s been said that women speak, on average, about 20,000 words per day, while men clock in at a measly 7,000. Now, while this difference of 13,000 words between the genders is undeniably interesting, if you think I’m going to delve into it in any way, shape, or form, then you’re absolutely crazy. (I get in enough trouble with women as it is. I certainly don’t need to go out looking for it.) However, in the spirit of journalistic integrity, I would be remiss if I didn’t include at least one professional opinion on the subject:

And now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’d like to shift our focus to the 7,000 words per day that a given male supposedly speaks, which – at least in my case – seems to be ridiculously high. If you do the math, assuming 8 hours of sleep a night (and no talking in your sleep), that comes out to roughly 437 spoken words per hour – or about 7 words per minute – which I find to be nothing short of laughable.

On a good day (e.g. a Saturday) I’d guess that I end up at only around 100 or so spoken words, and that’s if I’m feeling particularly chatty. Heck, there have even been days when my first words have been to a cashier at the grocery store sometime during the late afternoon or early evening. (And now that there’s self-checkout, I can usually get out of that, too!) But I suppose examining the weekend isn’t the most accurate means of determining the number of words I speak per day, so what follows is a painstakingly researched replication of my verbal output during an average weekday.

6:40 a.m. (Upon waking): “Ugh. Is it Saturday?” – 4 words

6:40 a.m. (Upon realizing that it is not, in fact, Saturday): “$#@#$%.” – 1 word

6:45-6:48 a.m. (Singing “Amarillo by Morning” in the shower) – 137 words

7:25-7:28 a.m. (Singing “Gentle on my Mind” in the car on the way to work) – 282 words

7:45 a.m. (Upon taking my first sip of coffee at my desk): “Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh, it’s like liquid heaven!” – 5 words

8:00 a.m. (As a co-worker approaches my desk for something work related): “I’m busy. Come back later.” – 5 words

8:37 a.m. (Upon reading something funny on the internet): “Ha ha!” – 2 words.

9:02 a.m. (As the same co-worker again approaches my desk): “I’m busy. Come back later.” – 5 words

10:37 a.m. (As the same co-worker again approaches my desk): “I’m busy. Come back after lunch.” – 6 words

12:04 p.m. (After swallowing my first bite of lunch): “I should really learn how to cook someday.” – 8 words

1:37 p.m. (After feeling like I should drop a few buzzwords in order to pretend I know what’s going on around me): “We don’t want a knowledge silo situation here, so I suggest we leverage the cloud in order to facilitate and streamline our entire communication strategy.” – 25 words

2:23 p.m. (After being woken from a deep slumber at my desk by the sound of a nearby phone ringing): “Huh? Whazzat? Knowledge silo!” – 4 words

3:14 p.m. (As the same co-worker again approaches my desk): “I’m busy. Come back tomorrow.” – 5 words

4:00 p.m.: “Woo-hoo! Quitting time!!” – 4 words, assuming that “woo” and “hoo” each count as one.

4:05-4:08 p.m. (Singing “Luckenback, Texas” in the car on the way home) – 262 words

5:37 p.m. (After swallowing my first bite of dinner): “This tastes like old socks. I probably should have ordered pizza.” – 11 words

6:07 p.m. (After seeing a spider scurry across the floor): “Whoa! That’s as big as a bulldozer! Die! Die! Die!” – 10 words

7:56 p.m. (After realizing that I can make a seven-letter word in Words With Friend but there’s no room for it on the board): “@#$#$#!!!” – 1 word

9:42 p.m. (Practicing to be an old man): “Get off my lawn!!!!” – 4 words

And so, when you add it all up, it comes out to exactly 781 spoken words, which means that I’m running, on average, about a 6,219 spoken word deficit per day. That’s a lot of unused words, and I can’t help but wonder if they’re all building up inside of me, and if so, will I ever have to use them in order to bring my system back into equilibrium? Basically, I’m afraid that someday I’ll hit a breaking point and suddenly have thousands upon thousands of unused words flooding out of me, essentially turning me into a babbling idiot who may have no choice but to run for public office. It’s a scary thought, to be sure, but maybe there are some ways I can mitigate the risk. For example, maybe somebody wants to buy some unused words off of me? I’ll sell them for cheap! And if that doesn’t work, I guess I can just try to be more vocal, in order to try and use up more of my daily word allotment. Hmmmmm.... maybe I can start taking a shower in the morning and the evening. That’s a whole extra song to sing!

Nostalgia

Just recently, during a trip back home to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I found myself wandering the halls of the John J. MacInnes Student Ice Arena, a place where I spent many hours of my college days at MTU working as an all-purpose janitorial engineer and laborer extraordinaire.

The air was brisk, just as I remembered, and a smell that I can only describe as “Eau de ice-arena” still hung lazily in the air. However, a lot had changed. The seats had been replaced, with the new versions mercifully sporting the Husky team colors of black and yellow, instead of the orange, yellow, and green disasters that had been there prior. Skyboxes and a gigantic scoreboard had also been added, and new signage and memorabilia displays helped to enhance the fan experience.

In short, it was a far cry from the days when I’d roamed the halls with a mop and a bottle of Bath Mate.

During my tenure as an employee at MTU – where my jurisdiction also included the rest of the Student Development Complex – it could never be said that we didn’t have fun. Just off the top of my head, I can distinctly remember the following:

• Being a co-founder and vice president of the now-defunct SDC Student Union.
• Playing Husky Trivia Challenge in the parking lot during hockey games, where fans were given the opportunity to have their two-dollar parking fee waived if they answered a trivia question of our choice correctly. (As I recall, nobody ever won, because even if the question was answered successfully, we’d still tell them they were wrong.)
• Toilet paper roll fights.
• Planting scrawled messages in the press box on crumpled-up pieces of paper that begin with the line, “If you’re reading this, then I’m already dead.”
• Putting a manila folder stuffed with McDonald’s French fries into a file cabinet in the office area – labeled “McDonald’s Fries” of course – just to see what the reaction would be.

I could go on for pages, but to be honest, I’d rather not. In fact, reminiscing about the SDC is something I rarely indulge in anymore, as somewhere along the line I made the conscious decision to try and not become the sad-looking guy who spends too much of his time romanticizing the past. In general, I consider nostalgia to be sort of like junk food. Everything in moderation, because too much can be bad for you.

However, as I stood in the ice arena a few short weeks ago, thinking about the times when I’d helped to paint the Winter Carnival logo onto the ice, I began to see it in a different way. Nostalgia doesn’t just have to be about reliving your so-called glory days. Instead, it can be used as a way to measure just how far you’ve come.

For example, the person I was back then and the person I am now are remarkably different. The college version of me tried a little too hard to be noticed, and he was a bit on the loud and annoying side. He’d also never really traveled, and he’d never been away from home long enough to truly appreciate family. In addition, he knew absolutely nothing about nutrition, as evidenced by the mind-boggling amount of Mountain Dew he somehow managed to consume without having all of his internal organs shut down in protest.

Not that everything about me has changed, mind you. I’m still infused with the same vein of silliness that’s been my constant companion throughout life –and which I hope to never lose – and I’m still constantly bombarded by the urge to come up with the perfect one-liner. On the downside, I still experience the same bouts of incredible shyness around girls, and I still worry a little too much about what others think of me. In short, it’s a mixed bag, but one that I’ll gladly accept.

Looking back at the college version of me, I can also see glimpses of who I’d eventually become. At the time, I’d never really considered doing any sort of writing, much less sharing it with the public, but it was during my tenure at the SDC that I penned an issue of the Student Union’s newsletter, The Cleanest Urinal. Looking back at it now, it was truly terrible, but it was still the first step – as shaky as it was – towards what I now consider to be my favorite hobby.

And then there’s the whole career thing. Back then I was spending several hours a day in the computer lab writing programs and trying not to inhale – as the body odor in that place was terrible – while making exactly zero dollars per hour. Now, however, I’m getting paid to do the same thing, plus the B.O. is gone! (My theory is that all of my deodorant-deficient peers eventually went on to work for the government, in which case, assuming one of them reads this, I’m definitely getting audited in the near future.)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that no matter the allure of the past, do your best to be happy with where you’re at now. It may not be your glory days, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, you may be surprised at just how far you’ve come.

However, you also shouldn’t be afraid to indulge in a little nostalgia now and then, as it can be fun in small doses. In fact, I could probably be persuaded after several Mountain Dews to recall a few good SDC stories, such as the time we unknowingly tried to charge the priest two dollars when he pulled into Saint Al’s parking lot to administer a service to his flock.