Konfusions....

Sometimes, we get so attracted to a word/phrase that we start using them so often that it becomes our buzzword. We tend to use it all the time for everything; literally. Most times, it works and we get away but not always. Caught with the wrong foot and it really is an embarrassment and konfusion.

I have this habit of questioning a statement in a jovial or satirical way with a "For what joy?" phrase.

Every information continues with my "For what joy?".

"I am taking off today"..........."For what joy?"
"He asked me to inform you......." "For what joy?"

Its no big deal about this phrase for questioning; until few days back. A friend was missing in action for a couple of days and then later informed that he was out of town.

As usual, I asked "For what joy?"

He said with a confused look, "My uncle passed away".

Oh gosh!! I just wanted to hide my face. It was really so embarrassing, but thankful that he knew my way of using "For what joy"; so he was not offended by it.

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At my work place, a member had a liking for the word "JUNK". For him, everything was junk. Junk design, junk code, junk people, junk process, junk food. I am not sure if he meant it but it seemed he was very much in love with "Junk". His computer desktop would have files named "junk1", "junk2", "junk3" and so on....

He abused 'junk' to such an extent that the word was pandemic(I like this word now. WHO has been using it of late). Every one of his team member started using 'junk'.

One such poor 'junk' chap was my 'junk' friend who had to work on a customer escalation(I dare not call a customer escalation 'junk'). He junk-solved the issue and posted a junk-software version for the customer to pick up. Guess what? He junk-named the file 'junk'. The consultant who represented the customer( a large organization) took it offensive. His question was - "Does my issue seem junk?" Higher authorities had to junk-intervene to bring the junk-situation under control.

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One other thing that I come across quite often is the SMS version of the word "come". The very first time I encountered it was in the form of text message from my college mate who was supposed to come to my home for a project discussion. His message was thus -

"I ll c*m. On d way". (Insignia refrains from typing the word here. So a *)

I was perplexed for a moment. Was I reading it right? Did that guy realize what he typed? Was I the 'evil' one with a dirty mind as "good" folks would say? Or was I too fast paced to know the word and what it meant; and the poor chap had only used it with sheer ignorance in order to save himself from the pain of tapping one extra key?

Later on, I got used to the SMS way of "come". Each day, I get called by such messages by my friend at work......"C*m, we'll go" and so on.....

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Another very old incident that I can recall even to this day occurred when I was around 4-5 years old. We had this home needs convenience store attached to my house. On the days my school was closed, my mom would ask me to watch out when she could finish some chores in the kitchen. She taught me a couple of call-out sentences in case we had a customer.

Its a well known fact that a language is spoken in many ways and they have their own dialects and slang; with different new words. This fact actually caused confusion and a near fight in one such case.

There was a customer, hence I had to call out to my mom notifying her. I called out in Tamil -

"Amma, Yaaro vandhurukka......" (Mom, someones here)

The guy who knew a bit of Tamil but was not a Tamil guy heard it otherwise (Obvious as one cannot expect him to know all the slang available in Tamil). He heard it as "vanthurukkaaN"(note the N here.....shows lack of respect) and was oblivious to the fact that ' vandhurukka' was an acceptable 'respectful' word

It meant that I addressed him in singular without respect. He picked that up and blamed that she(my mom) has not taught me basics of addressing elders with respect :-|

Konfusions....................................

PS : I did not forget the spelling of Konfusion. Its just that I liked Konfusion this way.