The Word Warrior (Down with IKTRay)

Please excuse the absence. I’ve been too lazy to blog. Then I got to happy to blog. Then I got too sad to blog. Then I got overwhelmed with all the things that I needed to blog that I just let it fall by the wayside. But the other day, I looked in the mirror and I said, “Hey Good Lookin – It’s time to get the blog cookin’!” Corny, I know, but it got me out of the doldrums.

Today, I wanted to talk about my battle with words. There are certain phrases that people say that really make me want to cut my own skin off. I was going to call this post Bad Black Cliches, but it’s not just the BBCs that bug me (“You Go Girl” – please, let it die). There are a variety of phrases that work my nerves for reasons that I will mention here. The #1 annoying phrase is the aforementioned ‘IKTRay’ … that’s right, it’s so frustrating that I can not even bear the thought of spelling it out. But keep reading I’ll mention it soon enough.

Here’s my top five list of Phrases that Must Die, in order of least annoying to most.

5. “I’m going to the movies, do you want to come with?” Now, this one makes me cringe and smile (sminge, if you will?). My freshman year roomie introduced me to this phrase, which left my little grammarian heart searching for the direct object. We then had this discussion about how the sentence wasn’t finished and she laughed it off and said people in her town always used this phrase. We became good friends, but I still gave her the side eye whenever she used this sentence. So now, this phrase still makes me cringe, but it’ll also make me smile as I think of my old friend.

4. “I felt some kind of way.” Seriously? What way do you feel? This is a sentence that says absolutely nothing. During a phone conversation, a friend was trying to describe an argument with her boyfriend. It went something like this: “I guess he felt some kind of way, so he said this. And then I was feeling some kind of way, so I said that.” Really? That tells me nothing. God created adjectives and adverbs for a reason. Use ‘em.

3. “Look at you!” This goes back to a day when I was at my part time job, describing my full time job to my manager. She was impressed, and her way of expressing this was with a little head nob and a squeaky, “Well, look at you!” Really? I could understand if I was in kindergarten and got through lunch with crayons up my nose. That deserves an L.A.Y. But I’m an adult. Why are you looking at me? Step off.

2. “That’s what’s up.” There was an E. Lynn Harris book I read where this woman was dating a young guy who always used that phrase. It didn’t bother me until I talked to someone in real life who said it, and then my ears started to BLEED. I mean, that’s no kind of response. Me: “I got my Christmas shopping done.” Him: “That’s what’s up.” Me: “I got a new job.” Him: “That’s what’s up.” That’s just wrong, on so many levels.

And now, for the top phrase that makes me want to hurt somebody:

1. IKTRay – “I know that’s right.” If you’ve ever said this to me, you should know now that I’ve put extreme thought into your assassination. It will be big, it will be bloody, and best believe, you will not survive unless you can justify that sentence to me. You can’t, can you? The person who says this is an obvious show off. They can’t be satisified with simply saying “I know” or “That’s right.” Oh no, they have to throw the two together, in some kind of horrible word kama sutra. I despise this term so much, that I refer to it in my own form of pig Latin. Yes IKTRayers, this is what you’ve driven me to do.