Does this make me look fat stupid?
The more I think about Bishop Trautman and the ineffable, I find that I am having a difficult time separating defense of the language and the overall ability of my fellow American Catholics to handle words with more than two syllables from the personal offense I take as "Ellyn Mary Smith von Huben I was raised Lutheran but now I'm Catholic. This plays to make weak point. I've long grown (figuratively and literally) beyond standing in front of the mirror and worrying about what makes me look fat. But I think I'm still as sensitive as an adolescent when it comes to looking stupid.

I'm not talking about acting stupid. Middle-age has had the nice effect of loosening me up as far as how I behave. Once painfully shy, I have finally shed the uptight coccoon of self-consciousness. Except... My weakness is I don't mind being thought of as an ass. Just not a stupid one.

Example: There was an incident at work when I was taking down information for an upcoming baptism. The mother spelled out the name of the guest priest who would be baptizing and added that he was a Jesuit. Then she said, "Put S period J period after his name. That stands for Society of Jesus." There was a great spiritual exercise in disciplining myself to simply say, "hmm mmm." When my brain was rapidly vacillating between, "No s**t Sherlock," "How stupid do I look" or a scaldingly sarcastic "You don't say?"

Now I'm thinking way back to when I was first married. I was making a little extra money doing typesetting for my father. I was working on an application form for a juried art fair when I came across the term SASE. My fresh BA in art history along with a fairly strong course of study studio art was of no use here. What was this SASE and why hadn't I ever had/used/bought one? What if I should need one? Is it like a GRE? Or was it part of one's portfolio? My new husband had studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago - did he have an SASE? Why was I feeling so stupid??? My dad, who had studied at Milwaukee's Layton School of Art, explained it to me. Without making me feel stupid.

Without the proper tending, from parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, the grim future predicted in Idiocracy (there's a reason it's so funny...) is not that far off: "But the English language had deteriorated into a hybrid of hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts."