Are Cows Really Holy? (standard:humor, 915 words)
Author: Godspenman	Added: Apr 03 2016	Views/Reads: 2127/1439	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
You can tell a lot about a person by the words and phrases they use. Of course, most use words and phrases they have no idea what they mean. Perhaps they heard somebody else say these words or phrases and so they incorporated them into their vocabulary, w

As an amateur wordsmith, I am fascinated with words and phrases. I love
my cell phone because I have a dictionary and thesaurus all ready for 
my personal touch and I can research any word or phrase I hear. 

You can tell a lot about a person by the words and phrases they use. Of
course, most use words and phrases they have no idea what they mean. 
Perhaps they heard somebody else say these words or phrases and so they 
incorporated them into their vocabulary, which, says more about them 
than anything else. 

I grew up in a very strict Amish/Mennonite community where speech was a
very guarded activity. Although not Amish or Mennonite, I still had to 
be careful what I said and how I said it. Curse words were completely 
off limit. No circumstance ever existed, according to these people, 
warranting any curse word. 

My maternal grandfather was like this. He never had much to say and did
not say that very often. I remember one time sitting on the front porch 
with my grandfather and his brother and we spent the whole afternoon 
together and probably did not say five words between the three of us. 
My grandfather certainly was not outspoken in anything. 

Whenever he got angry with my grandmother, he simply would leave the
house, walk down to the barn and who knows what he did venting his 
anger at the time. 

Venting anger is quite an occupation these days. Whether a religious
venue, a political venue or just some educational venue, people are 
filled with anger and are trying to vent it somehow and from what I see 
much of it is not working. 

An old saying goes, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will
never hurt me.” Yet, names do really hurt us. 

One phrase my grandfather used a lot was, “holy cow.” He was a farmer so
I instinctively thought he was talking about his cows. Why his cows 
were holy and others were not was something I could never comprehend. 
But, he was my grandfather. 

I still remember the first time I heard him say that phrase; “Holy cow,
it's hot outside today.” 

When he said it, I was rather confused. What does a cow have to do with
it being hot outside and are cows really holy? It just did not make any 
sense to me. 

Another favorite phrase was, “Holy cow, I'm tired.” 

Again, what does a cow have to do with him being tired? Maybe he worked
a lot with the cows. I know he had about a half a dozen dairy cows and 
he milked them all by hand. Maybe that is what he was talking about. 

But the thing that really got me was what in the world does “holy” have
to do with a cow? 

As I got older, I began to realize that “holy” and “cow” had nothing to
do with each other. It was just a phrase my grandfather used, and, to 
put it mildly, it really meant nothing at all. 

As I get older the more I realize that people say things they really do
not mean. In fact, most people do not really think about what they are 
saying let alone know what they are saying. 

As an amateur wordsmith myself, I like to parse my words very carefully.
I want to know what I am saying and say what I am thinking. Of course, 
according to the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage, thinking is not at 
the top of my list of activities. I cannot disagree with her on that 
one. 

Yes, words do matter. I need to be careful what I am saying, the more
important it is, the more I need to be careful to understand what the 
other person is hearing. One of the things I have learned as a husband 
is that what I am saying to my wife may not be what my wife is hearing. 




Click here to read the rest of this story (30 more lines)