As you LIKE it

More old stuff...

Shakespeare wrote the following: (Hamlet, I'm pretty sure)
"What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! "

He obviously didn't think we humans were actually angels or gods, but he was using a common literary device known as a simile. A simile is like a metaphor (wrap your head around that), in that it is capable of comparing apples to oranges, men to gods, and--in the case of Forrest Gump--of comparing life to a box of chocolates.

A metaphor eschews reality, and would go ahead and tell you that life *IS* a box of chocolates, even though the physicists tell us this is false. The metaphor is a high-brow literary device, and should be handled with care. Misuse around the wrong people could lead to misconceptions about the true nature of things. No, all the world is NOT actually a stage, as some idiot might infer from As You Like It. You are NOT actually "my sunshine, my only sunshine," even though that might send some strict literalists into a mental tailspin. Most people understand metaphors, however, so we can move on.

The simile--austere and reserved--would not lie so boldly. The simile would only tell you on a cold day that your toes are *LIKE* blocks of ice, conveying that you should thaw them out, but that they won't melt. Even strict literalists can't argue with this. 'LIKE' is the key word to surefire comprehension, and on that front, similies are idiot-proof. Usage of similies, however, is not--and this is where my rant officially begins. To be fair, the following are probably not intended as similies, but it is the only valid semantic construction in which they can be interpreted--which doesn't necessarily convey the intended meaning:

"Bob is like the nicest guy you'll ever meet." (They both are really into Pinot Noir, but Bob is an asshole.)

"Last night was like the greatest night of my life." (In both cases, it was a full moon, but I never want to see you again.)

I know you've heard this every day since high school. Starting with Valley girls in the last century, now just about all members of my generation (yes, even me) use these types of statements on a regular basis. You can, like, say what you want about the degradation of the purity of the English language--probably a valid rant in and of itself--but that's not my concern here.

The thorn in my side is that I've become acutely aware of the overuse of the word 'like' in conversational English, and it gnaws at my delicate sanity. The simile abuse, as noted above, is only one version. Only about 10 or 15 words can be spoken before 'like' is uttered in some manner, ringing like a bell in my head each time. 'Like' has become a designated hitter for so many parts of speech, which--much like in baseball--undermines the purity of the game.

Play this game the next time you're in a group of 20-30 year olds: snap your fingers, or tap your toes, (or thump the person next to you who's in on the game) or something everytime you hear the word 'like'. In this manner, I survived a dinner recently with a friend and, like, her cousin from, like, Texas A&M, and her, like, two best friends in, like, the whole world. My thumping, literally, could not keep pace with the conversation at times, and it took no less than 20 seconds of steady thumping before me and my friend were almost in tears laughing so much.

Worse than hearing others use it, is catching myself in the act. I've contracted a couple of friends to punch me in the nose whenever I, like, misuse the word...and I'm getting better.
Some of you might read this and enjoy it, or don't get it at all. That's fine. But if you're slightly OCD and slightly mental like myself, you've probably just been infected, whether you know it or not.

So what do you, like, think of that?