During the first couple of months at my first job as a newspaper reporter, I made a cringeworthy mistake.
As we all know, because we’re afraid of death, we like to use more neutral words when talking (or writing) about it. So, in newspaper obituaries, nobody ever dies; they pass away. No one is ever dead; they are deceased (a strange word, given that “ceased” should be thought to pretty much describe the act of having died, as you have ceased to live. Wouldn’t “de-ceased” better belong to those who are brought back to life?).
And no one is ever buried; they are interred. “Terra” meaning earth, well you can put it together.
But for a while, no one in the town I was reporting on was interred in Jim Hagarty’s news reports, at least not for a while. One day, a middle-aged man walked into the newspaper office and said something to this effect to me: “Why are all the people who are dying in this town being locked up after they die?” I said, “What?”
He went on to point out that I was using “interned” in all my obituaries instead of interred. Interned means to be locked away, as in internment camp.
Wow! After he broke that news, he could have knocked me deceased with a feather, and having passed away, I would have gladly been interred right there and then, under my desk if need be.
That was my biggest whopper at that paper unless you count my reporting a guy’s home address as being on “Mortgage Lane”, just the way he had given it to me. I don’t know if I even knew what a mortgage was at the time, but I soon learned that he lived on Frank Street. I guess he was just being frank; everyone on his street had a mortgage.
“Youchkins” as a certain undeceased, uninterred brother-in-law of mine often says.
As for my time at that newspaper, for reasons not related to the above described faux pas, it eventually died. Not deceased. Not passed away. It was deader ‘n a mackerel with an exclamation mark!
©2011 Jim Hagarty
