Death by Discourse

Have you ever felt that the words were out to get you?  "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me!"  Oh, but they will.  They will hunt you down and wreak their vengeance upon you. 

Yesterday, during my "clean all the things!" phase, I was opening the stack of junk mail one by one and running it through the shredder. I came to one not so special envelope from Chase Bank, poked my left index finger into the side of the adhesive flap, and ran my finger along it to open the envelope, and GASH!  I'm not talking about a little wimpy annoying paper cut.  Oh, no.  I am talking about the paper cut to end all paper cuts.  It bordered on the line of being life threatening.  It bled and bled.  Instead of cutting perpendicular to the surface of the skin, it cut parallel, leaving a lovely piece of skin that I now cannot live with, but cannot live without.  I washed it, put ointment on it, and applied a band-aid.  Threat neutralized.  Right?

Wrong!  Just when I thought I had escaped the wrath of the written word, the spoken word came after me.  Today, I was standing in my boss's office explaining the logistics of transferring a reappointment application from Crystal Reports to a PDF, then to Word to sidestep the mysterious text box picture issue, it happened.  "As you can see, I printed the sample form on the back of some scrap Paepaeurrr since we're just going to edit it anyway..."  The word "paper" decided to be pronounced with a terrible fake French accent.  The word had a life of its own, and an animosity toward my sense of confidence and composure.  I certainly didn't choose to say it that way.  I'm pretty sure my boss thought I had lost my mind, or at least my control of it.  I got a funny look, and I dredged along through the rest of my explanation.  Sabotage. 

Maybe words are seeking to settle the score, since they are all too often mauled and misused by the average person.  Who can know for sure?  At this point, I am going to avoid alphabet soup, since I do not want to choke to death.  All this time, I thought we were friends, Mr. English Language.  I feel so betrayed.  So deceived.  At least now I know where I really stand.