During a crowded session of the last General Conference, a very attractive young lady was noticed pushing her way through the throngs of people who were passing up and down the east stairway of the Salt Lake Tabernacle, some leaving on account of the excessive heat and others trying to secure their places. She seemed a beautiful girl and anxious to take part in the religious services then being conducted in the building. When she reached the center of the stairs she turned to her companion who was following her, and exclaimed: “Gee, what a push! but we’ve got to squeeze through, that’s a cinch!”
Imagine the shock to the people waiting on those stairs. The girl’s beauty disappeared, and she stood shorn of all the ladylike and refined attributes which she seemed at first to possess. It might have been a girl’s thoughtless remark, but at any rate, she left the impression with the stair-case audience that she should be taught how to conduct herself in public places. Some lessons in the good old modest rules of our mothers would be a blessing to many of our young girls, and, by the way, each Sunday School teacher might occasionally, with profit, give the girls a lesson on the subject of slang.
– Juvenile Instructor, March 1911
I wonder what the offending words were exactly? “Gee,” “push,” “Squeeze,” “cinch”? Or was it that she said aloud what others may have only thought?
steam blowing out my ears. That oughta offend somebody.
A truly polite young lady wouldn’t have been pushing.
But how is slang worse than jargon? And what about the many verbal shortcuts people use when discussing things they’re all familiar with.
Here’s a case in point. When we lived in Rochester, NY, a ward member told about his experience acting in the Palmyra/Hill Cumorah pageant. He was in the King Noah scene. It was hot. The cast was outside all day. He became ill and had to stop rehearsing. Someone asked if he would like to receive a priesthood blessing. He said yes, and the person replied, “I’ll just round up a couple of Wicked Priests and they can give you a blessing.” How shocking to anyone who didn’t know the context.
It’s hard to imagine such a crowd of moving people “during” a session, but I imagine that interrupting whoever is conducting a GC session must be a little uncouth even without the old-timey slang.
It helps me feel the scandal by imagining her saying this while popping her bubble gum.
Still, had it been a boy, I doubt we’d hear about how he was suddenly unattractive.
The appropriateness of slang depends somewhat on the context, I suppose. I presume that her locution has become considerably less slangy since 1911.
With regard to baptisms for the dead, my bishop regularly refers to the “dunkER” and the “dunkEE.” I don’t think of myself as much of a stuffed shirt, and I’m not above sometimes being what some might call irreverent. But I can’t imagine any context in which I would use those terms with regard to temple ordinances, or wouldn’t cringe on hearing others do so (particularly if it’s the bishop).
Last time, I thought maybe I should’ve said something. How about “officiator” and “proxy”?
Oh. My. Word, Left Field, that is awful.
It was only recently that I put together that he was consistently doing this. It doesn’t come up very often and I suppose that each time, I just dismissed it as a weird one-off and didn’t think about again. But this time, I realized I’d heard it before.
I think next time it comes up, I’ll take the opportunity to say something to him confidentially.