Words that mean something

A little story about pumping gas and a culture of hollow words

Photo by Kuan L on Unsplash

Yesterday, I filled up my tank somewhere outside Walnut Cove. I went into the gas station to pay, and the man in front of me in line was wearing one of those black T-shirts you see with words like “We the People” and “1776” in distressed font, making an American flag shape on the back. Standard enough.

But when he momentarily turned to grab a Twix off the display, I caught a glimpse of the shirt’s front. Alongside the image of a semiautomatic were the words “When tr*nny becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” Less standard. (It did not say “tyranny.”)

Now, I’m a words gal. I love words. I don’t always use them well or right, but I love them nonetheless and use the heck out of them. I love that the Inuit have fifty words for snow and that humans have tried millions of different word combinations to describe love but still can’t land it, kinda like how you can never really take a good photo of the moon to share with friends. I love long, complex, ridiculously high-faluting college words; I love simple grunted cuss words said under your breath and to no one in particular.

One of the words on this man’s shirt was a slur, and while that caught my attention, the offensiveness isn’t what I found interesting or noteworthy. It was the hollowness of the words together; the way highly charged words were combined to evoke and stir something in him and, no doubt, in me, in the cashier, and in everyone pumping gas that day. I felt like they were words packaged together in flimsy cellophane, a wrapping that will be tossed out a window and then live tangled in the daylilies growing on the side of the road for a millennium, long after we have forgotten what the words were about.

Resistance. Duty. These are words that should mean something. When yelled or even when whispered, they should stop us in our tracks, call us to attention, like your mama using your middle name when hollering from the back door. But instead, these words lay there on his shirt, two-bit words, slathered onto the fabric like a woman who puts on too much perfume, hoping to rouse a feeling in the man she presses her leg against.

The words on the shirt made me think of Red Bull: caffeinated words meant to jolt you through the day but not nourish you for the next. Discount words strung together, shifted and sorted by data points of arousal and spit out into fire-sale combinations meant to rock your world.

My world was not rocked. I stood there in line behind the man thinking about how, exactly, “tr*nny” becomes law? What does that look like? Is it legislated? An executive order? Is he confusing individual rights with some sort of mandate that he and I and everyone in the gas station will be subjected to?

And to whom is the duty? In concept, duty seems bound to another. It’s not a word that stands well on its own, but rather one that needs people, community, and conversation around it. We can be dutiful to our parents, our neighbors, I suppose our government if you lean that way.

Who does this man feel dutiful towards or for? I wanted to ask him, but while in line I was also reading the ads above the register: “Sale” describing things that cost too much. “New” describing things that are old. “Refreshing” for things that will sit hard in your stomach and make your mouth dry.

We abuse words. The same way we dive our hands again and again into a bag of potato chips as we drive, we forget to savor them.

The other day, I asked someone how the view was from the top of a mountain I want to hike, and she said, “It is so pretty.” I’m sure it was, but I thought to myself, if she really felt it was pretty, she might have described it as a 12-year-old boy I once overheard did: “From up there, the mountains look like a mother laid out on her side holding all her babies.”

Now, that kid was really taking in the view and loved what he was seeing.

So, does this man in the shirt even mean what he is saying? He’s using slurs and conjuring violence and 1776 and flags, but it seems so inane. It feels like at the end of the day, he might just peel off his creed, his duty, his resistance, and throw it in the wash, not even bothering to separate out the lights and darks before running the machine.

As I was thinking about all this, the bells on the gas station door clattered and the man in the shirt walked out. The woman behind the counter said to me, “Ma’am?” And I dug into my pocket and found two twenties to pay.

Popping open the Pepsi I had just bought, I walked back out into the baking North Carolina sun. I could feel the early summer heat vibrating off the asphalt and through the rubber of my Tevas.

The man in the shirt was pulling away in his Rav 4. I am a Southern woman, so when he nodded to me by way of a greeting, I politely nodded back. But I still wanted to ask him how “tr*nny” becomes law.

I’m not outraged by his shirt; I’m saddened. I’m saddened by the bigotry and its brazen display: I would rather live in a world where, even when we don’t understand something about another person or group, we struggle with that in our own conversations, hearts, and minds, and don’t wear it around hoping to connect with others through offense.

But mostly I’m crushed because I’m a words gal. I want a world where we have all the language we need to say what’s on our minds, to articulate ourselves, and to tell our stories. I want this because I believe in free speech, sure, but more because I want a fullness of life, a big, round world where, when we are called to resist, we drop what we are doing, and when our duty is summoned, we think of each other with real faces and real names. I don’t want words to be abused to conjure vague emotions and sensations, but instead to be used in novels and song, and in long conversations with old friends sitting in front yards, conversations that wander and explore, stay curious, and wrap up only when the peepers get too loud.

Ditch the cheap words and invest in poetry. We don’t live a long time, so try to find words that mean something.