{"id":29897,"date":"2023-05-06T06:14:20","date_gmt":"2023-05-06T10:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=29897"},"modified":"2023-05-06T06:31:52","modified_gmt":"2023-05-06T10:31:52","slug":"shared-shorthand-an-overdue-revisit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2023\/05\/shared-shorthand-an-overdue-revisit\/","title":{"rendered":"Shared Shorthand: An Overdue Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year ago here, I posted a “call for contributions<\/a>” on the topic of shared shorthand.<\/em>\u00a0 As I described it then, this is where you and your friend or partner use a word or phrase whose context and meaning only the two of you understand.\u00a0 Either of you may invoke the phrase to refer to a current situation, and each of you instantly “get” the association.<\/p>\r\n

My call did not elicit many responses, which is why this “revisited” post is so late to press.\u00a0 Besides the comments from Mary and Guy, I received exactly one other contribution, from a reader named Kevin Miller<\/a>:<\/p>\r\n

My partner and I were long-distance for the first two years of our relationship. We picked the octopus emoji, basically at random, as a quick text we could send to say \u201cI love you, I\u2019m thinking about you, you\u2019re my person.\u201d To this day (even after moving in together) we send each other octopus-related ephemera from the Internet, and often, just the emoji itself.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

This was sweet.\u00a0 I hope Kevin and his partner are still going strong and exchanging octopi.<\/p>\r\n

But I had promised, in that year-ago post, to share and explain a couple of examples of our own shared shorthand, namely The Ashley Principle and The John Sexton Rule.\u00a0 So, in the interest of literary closure if nothing else…<\/p>\r\n

The Ashley Principle<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\r\n

My spouse had to fill in my memories of The Ashley Principle’s 1990s origin.\u00a0 She says: “There was a small china and gift shop in Toronto.\u00a0 [Whose name is now lost to us both.]\u00a0 I\u00a0originally found the Portmeirion Welsh Wildflowers<\/a> pattern at her shop, but I thought I could buy them cheaper at Ashley’s.\u00a0 [The William Ashley store<\/a> on Bloor Street was known for its ‘great wall of china’ and we window-shopped there often.]\u00a0 So I ordered the china from Ashley’s — but then realized that the price at the smaller shop was actually better.”<\/p>\r\n

Now, my spouse’s plan was to walk into Ashley’s the next morning, inform them that the other shop’s price was lower and ask Ashley’s to meet it.\u00a0 I asked, but what if they refuse?\u00a0 My spouse said, I’m not going to go there.\u00a0 I’ll face that if I have to.<\/p>\r\n

This became known as The Ashley Principle:\u00a0 Commit to Plan A.\u00a0 Plan B is a distraction.\u00a0 Handle one thing at a time, and deal with the outcome of Plan A if and when.<\/p>\r\n

As it happened, the Ashley’s salesperson checked with management and agreed to match the price at the other shop.\u00a0 So my spouse did not have to resort to Plan B, which is good, because she really didn’t have one.<\/p>\r\n

These days, we invoke The Ashley Principle as shorthand for, this is too much planning, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, let’s see what happens before we spend a lot of energy on alternatives.\u00a0 I’m usually a planning kind-of-guy but there’s something to be said for this.<\/p>\r\n

The John Sexton Rule<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

We custom-built our current home almost 20 years ago, our first (and last!) foray into the world of residential construction.\u00a0 John Sexton was the project manager, our contractor’s right-hand man.\u00a0 I respected John, as he had just the right combination of perfectionism and pragmatism needed for building a custom home.\u00a0 And he had also acquired the skills to deal with, fend off and ultimately satisfy the kind of people who want such homes.<\/p>\r\n

But inevitably, there would be a hiccup in our home-building experience: our hardwood floors had numerous visible scratches, due to the flooring contractor’s carelessness with the installation.\u00a0 This was not obvious to us until the final walk-through, as the floors had been covered with paper after they were installed — to preserve the scratches I guess!<\/p>\r\n

In any event, we reviewed the issue with John and said how noticeable the scratches were whenever we looked down.\u00a0 John’s initial, not-entirely-tongue-in-cheek response was, “Then don’t look down.”\u00a0 This became the essence of the John Sexton Rule.<\/p>\r\n

I was floored [ha ha] and said we needed a better solution.\u00a0 Ultimately, the flooring guys replaced the worst of the damaged boards and John and I spent a couple of hours on our knees rubbing out and filling in the lighter scratches.<\/p>\r\n

Our floors got fixed but the John Sexton Rule lives on in our household.\u00a0 It gets invoked — mostly by me and usually ironically — to suggest that one approach to a nagging problem is to stop thinking so much about it.\u00a0 Don’t look down indeed!<\/p>\r\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

The floor, if you will, remains open for your shared shorthand contributions.\u00a0 Thanks.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A year ago here, I posted a “call for contributions” on the topic of shared shorthand.\u00a0 As I described it then, this is where you and your friend or partner use a word or phrase whose context and meaning only … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29897"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29933,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29897\/revisions\/29933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}