good riddance, luddite
/When you spend a lot of time with your housemates, like during a deep snowy winter or a pandemic, there comes a time when two of you, or all of you, simply don’t agree.
In which case, a well-placed word could go a long way. It may go a long way in the wrong direction, however, and it may have legs that follow you for quite an annoying time. Your housemates may not like what you called them.
This word, for example: Luddite.
Because Ray and I were having a so-called discussion, and I was accusing him of being narrow-minded and backward, and he was accusing me of being a nag, I called him this old-fashioned word. Which led him to look up the definition and discover the Luddite in the house is me, because it means the kind of person who would rather write in pen and ink than fire up the computer. A Luddite is someone who shuns modern technology, named after English workers who did just that.
I was using it all wrong. He doesn’t shun technology; he shuns plain common sense.
He followed this remark by calling me a “doofus and goofus.” I pointed out this is a meathead expression used by people who are too lazy to search for more appropriate and cutting words. They’re namby-pamby terms like half-wit and yo-yo, I said—so infantile—to which in the maturity gained from being stuck with him in the house, I called him a Neanderthal.
I did this because I read that people of European descent still have two percent Neanderthal DNA, which, as a Luddite, I claimed he uses on a regular basis to show he’s more valuable than me because he can do something fancy like sharpen a large knife. I informed him this is an obsolete hunter-gatherer activity and, anyway, at this stage of our togetherness we should have removed all the cleavers from the house.
Which made him call me a bore, defined as a dull and tiresome person who provides nothing interesting to say.
Blah, blah, blah, babble, babble, babble, was all I could add in response.
Most of the time though, during the pandemic winters, we kept things copasetic.
But not always. Or sometimes. Or hardly.
Certainly not, I pointed out, when he acted like an ordinary clod, which I could finally say when spring arrived and I could get out of the house. After, we deconstructed the topic of how well we got along with a newfound freedom we didn’t dare display earlier when it was too risky because we were stuck.
Looking up the official definition of clod, I came across this sentence as an example and read it out loud: “You are an insensitive clod and I hope you fall and break your neck.”
I pointed out that I didn’t say that the dictionary did, so don’t blame me.
He countered with “philistine,” which he knew would get under my skin because I’m nothing like that old neighbor Phyllis who was quite a dolt, a stupid person. Philistine, he read on his phone as he shook his head, was another word I’d been using all wrong.
“In the fields of philosophy and aesthetics,” he read, “the derogatory term philistinism describes the manners, habits, and character of a person whose anti-intellectual social attitude undervalues and despises art and beauty, spirituality and intellect.”
“Stop talking about yourself,” I said. “It’s rude, egotistical, and in my opinion, sickening.”
To which he said, “Maybe-I-am-but-what-about-you?” Then he stuck out his tongue and wiggled his fingers with his thumbs in his ears as I turned away to leave the house.
And I went, I finally went. I left the house free and easy, good riddance, chump.
But before I drove off, I asked what kind of takeout I should pick up for dinner.