Sunday, March 16, 2008

At A Loss

“I’m sorry. I’m at a loss for words.”

I have some advice for you. If in someway you allow the aforementioned phrase to seep out of your mouth in a moment of mental confinement, will you do all six of us in the real world a huge favor, and shut the fuck up?

Walk away from whatever podium, camera, microphone or reporter you’re standing in front of, and find something else to do with your idle mind. Preserve for us the precious few seconds you’re wasting so we can do something better with them than listen to you think of something to say after you have just told us you have nothing else to say.

Fuck a figure of speech, it’s a bad cliché. Can you possibly think of how it makes us feel to know we are wasting away listening to you think? If I added up the time I’ve waited for someone to say something profound after excusing that phrase from their person, then subtracted that figure from my age of 27, I would be, I don't know, 8.

This is not a gross exaggeration.

The first time I heard someone utter this phrase, I was in the second grade, and too young to recognize figures of speech. I took all things literally. If my mother said, “I’m going to whoop your ass when we get home,” I didn't laugh it off because she would follow through.

So when someone dare say “I’m at a loss for words,” I expected them to not say anything else. But, to my surprise, no one stops talking. They take it as an opportunity to soak up as much undeserved attention as possible.

“I… just don’t know what to say …. I just want to let you know that accomplishing this was just really, really hard, and it took a lot of effort.”

Really? It took effort to form that simplistic ass sentence and purse your lips to release it? Would you please …

… I don’t know … I’m frustrated … I’m walking away now because I’m at a loss for words.