K?

A few years ago I had taken a college course in Criminal Justice. 

I had no interest in becoming an officer of the law, it was an elective that I believed would benefit me greatly.  I thought it would be the only college course I had ever taken where knowledge gained could be retained and applied for many years; translation, how I could learn to beat a traffic citation. 

Well worth the price per credit hour.

Well my plan backfired.  I dropped the course, as I found the textbook to be very boring for these reasons:

·         The author learned a new word, “paradigm” and somehow found a way to insert it into every sentence. I am still uncertain if I actually know the true meaning.

·         I was convinced that Cop-Speak was only in acronyms.  I know this sounds as if I am exaggerating but the text was so overloaded with 3 and 4 letter words that the course credits should also be applied to foreign language studies.

These days, especially with “texting & tweeting-mania” running a muck, our every thought, deed or misdeed needs to be shared in writing, (or vine and youtube videos) and instantaneous, so I guess brevity and speed becomes paramount.

I have studied Latin (well I sat in a classroom for a year), as well as 4 years of Spanish and I am still unable to determine if the contractors installing my new roof are actually plotting against me.

Now I must resign myself to learning a new language, namely acronyms. 

Does everyone over the age of 40 realize that there are currently almost 1000 acronyms used in texting?

Truth be told 1000 is probably larger than my total vocabulary (including my Latin & Spanish words) but current medical science suggests that as we age, mind-expanding activities, like learning to play an instrument, a new language and doing crossword puzzles may help keep us from forgetting where we left the car keys (or the car, or the spouse) so I guess I need to check Amazon for the "Acronyms for Dummies" book and start cracking the code.

I understand that there are character restrictions when tweeting, so choosing the right words to express oneself can be challenging, acronyms abound.

Texting, however, provides plenty of opportunity (while seated in your office cubicle) for one to ridicule and detail how their co-workers and boss are so clueless and inferior that acronyms are really not needed unless others are relentlessly spying on you while you are screwing off.

As is every other thing in life, once something new is introduced into the society, and before you have an understanding of what it is all about, there will always be someone at the ready to quickly alter the existing and create a new paradigm (did I get it right?).

This is now occurring with acro-speak.

Just when I am finally getting to learn how to hit the correct keys on my Galaxy 4 without having spell check insert words making me sound even dumber, a co-worker acknowledged one of my tweets with the letter “K”.  I thought it was due to his lack of sobriety but over the course of the next few days he repeated the acknowledgement using just the letter “K” in additional texts.

He was too lazy to preface with the letter “O”, thus he was acronyming the acronym.

I was pondering just how lazy this lunkhead was until I started to receive similar responses from others, including my own daughter.

Wow, I guess my life isn’t as busy as others. I actually have excessive time on my hands to include the “O” in OK. 

I am beginning to feel slothful.

I will conform, get in line and understand the new-speak and all of its variations. 
I know my mind will also benefit from the mental exercises and one day I will remember where I left my car keys and my spouse.