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Take percolate. I would bet most of those under forty-five have no idea where the word comes from or what it means. I grew up with a coffee percolator in the house. The smell was one of those smells I welcome even now. Do I drink coffee? No. Do I make it for my wife on occasion? Yes. Have I made coffee just for the smell? Damn skippy I have.

Now percolate doesn’t just mean coffee. It has several applications such a allowing my mind to percolate until it comes up with a blog post topic. 

Now percolate is a word used so rarely you might as well consider it dead. Just like the home phone. As a kid in the sixties I accompanied my mother to an AT&T store to rent a phone. Yes, I said rent. In those days you didn’t purchase a phone, you rented them from the phone company. Ma Bell in all her finery.

You rented the phone, paid for the install and the phone number, and then you paid for long distance. Now long distance is another concept lost on people today, like percolate. I paid long distance rates to call someone who lived over a river. The river was right next to where I lived and the people didn’t live ten miles from me, but I paid through the nose for long distance. Go figure.

So many things we paid through the nose for only to discover they were invented charges just to suck us dry from our money. The first VHS machines cost in the thousands. I watched my first video in high school. They had to wheel the VHS machine in on a cart. It was huge. The idea of VHS tapes now is a lost concept. Most who even remember the days of Blockbuster don’t think about the VHS tapes, they think about the DVD’s.

I liked the days of VHS tapes and big hair. Yes, I was in my twenties and early thirties back in the ‘80’s. I loved big hair, MTV, HBO when it didn’t have commercials and all the newness the ‘80’s provided. It was a new era and I loved it. Of course, I loved aerobics too. I didn’t do it, but I watched a lot of the women in their stirrup pants do it.

It amazes me as I get older how much has changed and then again how much stays the same. We have instant communication with anyone anywhere. We have the internet and electric cars and? Well, the list goes on and on. However, the basic dynamics of humanity hasn’t changed. People are people regardless of technology.

We can be happy, mad, sad, glad, horny, hurt. We love, hate, destroy and build. We search and we seek, and we knock on the door. We enjoy music and despise it as well. We want people to share our point of view and have trouble with those who don’t.

The idea of racism should have died with Dr. King, but I find myself now classified as a racist for no other reason than my skin is white. A racist statement in itself. I find I hate racism. I always have. However, racism isn’t just a white thing. Let that one percolate inside your head for a while. 

One of those things I find I also hate is the continuing lack of good speech. As a child I would have my head smacked if I spoke in such a manner as to sound uneducated. Being uneducated in Virginia meant you hailed from white trash. No one ever wanted to be labeled as white trash in the South. No one. See, you could be poor, you could be white, but under no circumstances could you be poor white trash. 

White trash is probably one of the worst insults someone could call me. I have had problems in my life, but I have never been white trash. It was a choice. One I could never make. I can’t embarrass Grandma like that. Period.

There are many other words like percolate I could assail you with, but I have a feeling you would rather not. Yet, proper speech filled with a great vocabulary is often underrated as a tool for both writing and talking. 

In fact, most want you to dumb down your work to appeal to the masses.

I think we should percolate on that statement, don’t you?

I’m Ross, The Editor-in-Chief at The Pyrateheart Press and I’m out.