Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Water over the "Damn."

Water over the “Damn“

When I saw Karen’s prompt a fire-hose of thoughts came to mind. Basically I concluded that some people really struggle to express themselves and for others it seems effortless. Most of what I read reflects the struggle taking place but sometimes you read a price in which the mind of the author is crystal. When you read the latter it makes the writing appear so easy when exactly the opposite is true. Fuzzy writing is easy…. Lucid writing is hard. Those who can write lucidly deserved all the credit they get.

I was distracted by the need to do some practice on my welding and a good example of fuzzy thinking set to words took place before my very eyes. I have been trying for two weeks to weld these coupons of sheet metal and not met with very much success. Suddenly it dawned on me that the material was too thin for the process I was using. In a convoluted sense this was a great example of the prompt….that words mean different things to different people and what is written is not always readily absorbed into a readers mind.

In retrospect I have been real dumb ass. I was using sheet metal I had laying around the shop and the thickest was less that one sixteenth of an inch which is the minimum recommended with the gas tips I have.

I used a thickness gage to stumble upon this revelation but even then the understanding was not self evident. Yes, I could stick the coupon into the slot but the information provided told me the gage of the metal on one side or the thickness in thousands on the other. For a dyslexic converting thousands of an inch into a common fractions is an agony.

Perhaps you are no doubt unaware that the larger the gage of a metal the less the thickness. Is that backward or what? Who thought that one up? Finally when all else failed I went to the operating instructions in the manual for the torch. Shown below is the information it provided. Now if you really study that the information is there to show what I was doing wrong but it is not what I would call the greatest chart in the world and it bounces all over the place in what it is trying to say. Like a lot of the instructions I read in How to Do it Books

#00 Tip: 24-28 gage steel
#0 Tip: 1.5mm, 1/16in, 20-22 gage steel
#0.5 Tip: 1/16in, 20 gage
#1 Tip: 1.5mm-3mm, 1/16-1/8
#1.5 Tip: 1/8-3/16in
#2 Tip: 3/16-1/4in.

It would have been nice to have a chart that showed a picture of the tip and the drill size of the hole coming out of it. Then for those who are metrically inclined a millimeter equivalent, the thickness expressed as a common fraction, then the gage, and finally the value expressed in thousandths of an inch. Instead I have 4 different measures of the same thing. If you could have seen me with a calculator trying to convert thousandths into simple fractions that were being referred to in the manual, you would have been amused. It was like watching a bear attempt needlepoint. What is simple to many normal people is not so simple to me. Eventually I figured it out and discovered my problem. The material I was trying to weld was way too thin. It wasn’t my skill, stifle that thought it was the wafer like thickness of the coupons I was trying to weld. It wasn’t my fault…. Got that? It was the materials.

I think this is a dimension of what the quote in the prompt is trying to say….not exactly but sort of. To one person thickness is expressed in gage. To someone not familiar with this word it has little meaning and when the number gets larger as the thickness decreases that seems to defy logic.

When someone talks about thickness some equate that to gage, others to millimeters, others to fractional inches, and others to thousands of an inch. So it is with words. They have many connotations that change shades of meaning and the manner in which they are articulated and the tone add a whole bunch more. It is no wonder that readers often find it difficult to understand what is being said.

Even a simple word like “No” can be misunderstood. In the popular song the singer asks…”What part of No don’t you understand.” Parents often start off by saying “No” but that is only taken by an adolescent to signify a beginning point for negotiations.

Then there is how the word is used in context or maybe how a word isn’t used at all when it should be. Like “Excuse Me.”

Sometimes word choice garbles the message and sometimes what might have been better stated only dawns on us later. On reflection what we might have said becomes abundantly clear while at the time we responded inappropriately; or appeared stupid at a complete loss for words.

It all comes down to communications and words are only a part. Saying the right thing at the right time is an art and that is why some people are good writers and talkers and others sit there with wide eyes and slack jaws.