Word: oneself
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...goes solitude? Is it all it's cracked up to be? Time for oneself to be pensive and find that deep inner core? Or does loneliness set in and communal living take on a rosier gloss? It depends. Like most things in life, I can't promise that a solo summer will solve all problems or even be a blast, but for some it could be just the change of atmosphere necessary to clear the cobwebs in your head...
...right and away, faster than that blue van ever could go. I see the incident as my own fault, even though driving with one's windows open should be an inalienable right. The world just isn't a safe place, and it's best to be scared, to protect oneself and to stay in safe situations...
...ugly side effect is a presumption among many adolescent boys that sex is an entitlement--an attitude that fosters a breakdown of respect for oneself and others. Says a seventh-grade girl: "The guy will ask you up front. If you turn him down, you're a bitch. But if you do it, you're a ho. The guys are after us all the time, in the halls, everywhere. You scream, 'Don't touch me!' but it doesn't do any good." A Rhode Island Rape Center study of 1,700 sixth- and ninth-graders found 65% of boys...
...fact, most talking to oneself involves a low order of business--pettiness, self-justification, improvised rants or what the French call l'esprit d'escalier, the things that you should have said a moment ago, lines you think of while coming down the stairs. (The British call it "taxi wit," which may prove that the French think faster than the Brits.) This debased muttering is directed at salesclerks, ticket-writing cops and even would-be muggers: "You know, son, when I was in Nam .." Talking to oneself is inherently a private act, not meant to be shared, and as such...
Long ago, the humorist Finley Peter Dunne ("Mr. Dooley") described being Vice President of the U.S. as "a sort of disgrace, like writing anonymous letters." Talking to oneself is cousin to that. It seems a Richard Nixon sort of thing to do. If Nixon did not actually talk to himself, he gave the impression that he did. For all his reputation for covertness, Nixon's real problem was his inability to conceal the darkly busy workings of his mind--the wheels turning, the eyes darting. You could almost hear him talking--a subliminal tape--even if the words were...