Monday, July 31, 2006

My use of "retarded"

i'm posting this to set something straight. i've taken to use the term "retarded" recently. i find it describes situations in a certain way very specifically that i find accurate.

but i'm not an idiot. i realize that it was a word that was once accepted in society to be used describing those who were born with any variety of mental challenges. even of those, it was really only fitting to use it a certain way. if someone was mentally slow, they could have been refered to as retarded. however, we've since realized that the word began to take on some less than desirable connotations and it's not really fair to describe a person in such a way anymore. and we can thank the jerks who started to use the word out of context to describe anyone who had any disability of any kind and to do so in mockery of those people.

unfortunately, there is still the small matter of having a word that can be very descriptive of situations or things people do. for example, I was very retarded when it came to high school math. that's why I joined the "applied math" class (known to us as "dumb math"). or, as another example, when that guy forgot his wife's birthday and made it worse by pretending like he didn't forget, he just didn't think she would care if he ignored it, he was being retarded.

so if you hear me using it and you take offense, just relax and ask yourself "Was the way that person parked actually retarded?" or "isn't it possible that the way that job was done was clearly retarded?" i think we all know what answer you'll come up with...oh, fine, i'm alone on this one. what else is new?!