Say what?... part one

The English language is one of some subtlety and a source of frustration. Full of words spelled the same way yet, depending on the sentence context and pronunciation, presents a different meaning. Heteronyms. And, homographs. Is it any wonder then that Strother Martin's character in Cool Hand Luke spoke the immortal words, "What we have here is a failure to communicate?"

Combine that with the attention span of most people and varying accents and there is a recipe for further confusion.

I'm reminded of a situation a few years back with our vet, Dr. Jeff. We were in with Ozzie, our first Bernese Mountain Dog and for some reason, we started discussing "scooting" and "expressing anal sacs". Oz never had this issue and why we got to talking about it, I have no idea. TLATO started talking about something else, completely unrelated. But Jeff, as he is wont to do, started off on one of his medical soliloquies. He kept using the phrase "anal sex", at least, that's very much what it sounded like to me and Sheryl. His conversation even started to make some sense around this particular phrase. He described how working in the veterinary practice he would need to be involved with it almost daily. In fact, he almost boasted that there were a couple of female vet techs who “worked in back” that had apparent expertise with handling anal sex. How he would know this made us both wonder in an "Eeeeeew!" way.

After a few moments of this, I swear, all we continued to hear were those two words. Anal. Sex.

Each to their own we thought, independent of one another, left and then got in the car. A few moments of absolute silence passed before we looked at one another. "What the hell was that all about?" We consider Jeff our vet and a friend, however, neither one of us had any knowledge of the relationship careening into what some might consider taboo territory.

We went over the highlights of the conversation (as I alluded, pretty much one-sided with the occasional, "Really?" or "Uh-huh!" muttered uncomfortably from one us), we slowly but surely and practically simultaneously realized that we were not part of an anal sex "back door" discussion, rather a medical one - as it related to animals and their anal sacs.

I'm reminded of dear Emily Patella (for those who have no idea, a character of the late Gilda Radner)...

"What's wrong with sax and violins on television? I think there should be more sax and violins."

"Emily, that's sex and violence, not sax and violins."

"Oh. Never mind."

And on that note, please see video below...