OK. I’ve had it. For a while there, I was trying to ignore a mystifying tendency on the part of public people everywhere to snip off the hard edges of language and turn all concepts into verbal mush. But recently, when a radio reporter announced that an overturned tractor-trailer was causing traffic “issues” on the New Jersey Turnpike, I finally began to paw at the earth with my hooves, snort fire, and reach for my pen.

Problems. Problems. Problems. Yes, World. Even though we have been trained to call stewardesses “flight attendants,” waiters “servers,” deaf people “hearing impaired,” manic-depressives “bi-polar,” actresses “actors,” pregnancies “baby bumps,” and fat ladies “curvy” (ha! Tell that to my scale), we still do have problems.

Let us consider two definitions courtesy of The Oxford American Dictionary.

“Issue: The point in question, an important topic for discussion.”

“Problem: Something difficult to deal with or understand.”

“At issue, Mrs. Farnagle, is whether it is sensible to order hot coffee from a drive-through diner, place that coffee cup between your thighs, and then attempt to transfer it safely to your mouth while you are driving a car.”

As opposed to:

“The problem, Boss, is that after I served Mrs. Farnagle her hot black coffee, she crammed the take-out cup between her legs, started driving away, and spilled it. Now she’s suing us because she says the coffee was so hot that it scalded her thighs!”

Think about it: Twelve-year-old Gorlock tears a slat from the picket fence around the schoolyard to use as a toothpick after he has tried to eat the soccer team’s coach. Is Gorlock an “issue” child or is he a “problem” child? Think further: A storm tears the roofs off thirteen houses and almost drowns two teenagers in a stolen convertible at the drive-in movie. Are we, as media gurus insist, having climatological issues? Or are we having plain old down and dirty weather problems?

A fourteen-year-old girl has acne. Does she have a skin issue or a skin problem? Your husband has embarked upon an affair with the local postmistress (no pun intended). Once you would have known that your marriage was in serious trouble. Now, adultery has been demoted to a marital “issue.”

Instead of conveying danger when danger is present (hurricanes, lawsuits, infidelity, obesity), language jockeys have taken the sass, brass, sting, and spring out of hot button topics and so effectively neutralized words that we are being lulled into passive acceptance.

Suspects of crimes have become “persons of interest.” Attempted burglaries have become “home invasions.” The poor shlub trying to keep his customers from stealing him blind has been taught to refer to theft as “shrinkage.” The thug who knocks out Johnny’s teeth isn’t even a bully anymore; he’s just a kid with self-esteem issues whose schoolyard tyranny is a form of “acting out.” And the fat lady in the circus isn’t even fat anymore. She is a champion of “body positivity.”

As a literate nation, we used to cheer as the sleek, high-stepping stallion of words thundered past the finishing line. Now, we sit by dumbly as those once virile words are being pulled out of the race and replaced by gelded ponies. And don’t even get me started on men insisting on being called women, gals “identifying” as guys, He being She. She being Them. And good-hearted dopes being forced to call a single individual (one heart, two lungs, two arms, two feet) THEY.

Quick. Get me a Tylenol!

Why, too – as the song from Casablanca insists – if “A kiss is still a kiss and a sigh is still a sigh” – have so many other words lost their meanings?

If a male is a female, Islamist baby-killers are “freedom fighters,” high school savages who kill their classmates are “misunderstood teens,” drug addicts are “substance abusers,” and terrorists are “victims” … when will a “punch” become “kiss?” “murder” be redefined as a “sigh?” and …

Oh, wait. That has already happened.

Dear Old Reality – if one consults contemporary intellectuals and philosophers – has completely ceased to exist.

Or … has it?

A simple test.

Put your hand into the red-hot flames of a stove that identifies as a refrigerator…

Between the deadly jaws of a shark who identifies as a minnow…

In the grip of a 400-pound male arm-wrestler who identifies as a woman…

You’ll find out soon enough.

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2024. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com