1 Reason to guard your words....

Today, one of my professors demonstrated a great reason to think first speak later. During a discussion about how to effectively make announcements, one classmate commented that their church used monitors stationed strategically around the facilities. She further commented that for people utilizing the nursery, they provided a paging system that vibrates and shows a number on all the monitors if there is an issue with their child. The discussion quickly moved from using vibrating pagers in church, to their use in restaurants (examples cited were the COCK of the walk, the ROOSTER, and Chili's). This is where it became apparent that there was a disconnect between the prof's generation and the student's generation. The word pager fell out of the conversation and the prof spent what seemed like five minutes or more talking about "vibrators" going off in pockets. The whole class was trying hard to keep from bursting out in laughter. Admittedly, I lost it when I saw two classmates laughing in the back. I was crying. The collective mentality in the room was roughly 10 years old, and the Prof never had a clue. To make matters worse, the Prof is a pastoral communications teacher and always espousing clarity when you speak.

Remember the words of Rush Limbaugh everyone, "Words mean things," and it is important to know what words mean to the people you're addressing.