The Cat’s Mother, the Stoner’s Dog: More Conversations With “Huh?”

“He” and “she” in Glasgow simply do not dwell; who sayeth “She” might call the kitty’s mother just as well…

Apparently the cat is a “she.”

Oh, let us explain: It was one of those surreal work conversations D. often has, when his boss is tense. (D’s boss was tense this time because D. was leaving the office, and will be letting T. hide behind him in D.C. for a week — and his boss really hates it when D. leaves because D. makes Said Boss look good, and Said Boss is rendered clueless without him. :cough:) Standing at his administrative assistant’s desk, D’s boss asked for the nth time, “Do we have your contact numbers?” D. nodded to the administrative assistant and said, “Yes, she has them.”

To which the secretary sputtered, “She? She’s the cat’s mother!”

At which point the needle skittered across the record and everything stopped. “What?!” D. asked.

“She is the cat’s mother,” the woman repeated impatiently.

D. shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “Not getting it.”

D’s boss then took great pride in explaining to him that saying “he” or “she” is rude and that D. shouldn’t use those words.

Sadly, neither Boss nor Admin could tell him how the cat fit in there, or why.

“It’s just not done here,” was the best answer he got.

Okay, let’s take a brief detour. Many students in the Olden Days of American Education learned little rhyming phrases like, “I before E, except after C, or when sounding an A as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh,'” and, I discovered recently, many of them were not told what the heck that meant. (It’s also an anCIEnt, unsCIEntific, ineffiCIEnt, insuffiCIEnt and defiCIEnt rule, to which there are at least a hundred or more exceptions.) To your adult mind now, the spelling rule is kind of self-explanatory, but imagine you learned this when you were nine, okay? Not a lot of clue at that point for some. Now, let’s jump to Glasgow’s citizens, at the same age. Apparently, they were scolded — by their elders — about referring to their parents as “he” or “she” instead of as Mother Dear and Father Dearest. “She” is such a careless phrase, when referencing the woman who birthed you. Why, you could be calling the cat, with that “she!”

(Actually? NOT REALLY. Especially not if the person to whom you refer is IN THE CONVERSATION RIGHT WITH YOU, but WHATEVER.)

Said Boss and Admin have carried from childhood the rule about not using “he” and “she” without knowing when that usage is rude, and now simply eschew all pronouns, apparently. It’s kind of funny, but kind of bizarre as well.

Perhaps the admin simply “disna have a Scooby.”

Are you feeling the need to say, “What?!” here? D. did. On his business trip down to Southampton this week, D’s coworker was grumping about the client, and claimed that they didn’t have a scooby. After a bit of questioning, the coworker decoded. Scooby is a short for Scooby Doo, the supremely stupid and annoying semi-talking dog from that horrific 60’s/70’s cartoon. A Scooby is Glasgow’s version of the Cockney rhyming slang. Scooby Doo… is a clue. So, the boss doesn’t have a clue.

So, now we have a cat, and a stoner’s dog.

Yeah, we’re feeling the lack of a scooby at this point, too.

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Well, we’re off. Next dispatch will be from our hotel in balmy (95°F/35°C) downtown Washington D.C., which should be interesting. Stay tuned.