this is why I have a blog...

so that at times I can vent when people are politically incorrect, claim it unapologetically, and it's not worth it to mention that perhaps some of the words or actions you use really are like little arrows that hit you, prick, and then bounce off.
and...perhaps, one (as in me) is a little overly sensitive.
but here it goes.

Dear You.
you have no clue, do you, that when you
use words like "stranglehold" or clutch your neck with both your hands,
or point an imaginary gun to your head
that a person who is listening to you
has to stop, catch her breath,
as she imagines her loved one
strangling himself to death by hanging on a rope,
or he almost doubles over because remembers his dearest
who blew her brains out and he was first there at the scene....

To you, to most people these are words and actions that are part of common conversation, words that are used in metaphor, in imagery, meaning really nothing real...
but there is this club that some of us belong to,
where those words
evoke an emptiness, a slash of raw pain,
because they don't evoke a metaphor,
they evoke reality.

It would be so bad, you...
if you just used those words once, in passing...
but they are phrases that are clearly part of your teaching canon.

Call me over-politically correct.
I don't care.
I think you would like to know that they hurt, but then, maybe you would think I was just being over the top.
sigh.