TAKE A CHILL PILL.
That was the prescription from my 11-year-old niece as I freaked out about some spaghetti sauce spilt all over my sofa. As I commanded her to the corner for being rude, it occurred that this is perhaps just what we all need sometimes –a good ole “chill pill”.
I hear Red Plastic Bag saying he “doh like cold” almost every night, but let me just clarify: chilling is not coldness. In fact, the concept of chilling came up in the late 1970s, with reference to calming one’s state of mind. But then again, it is simply the semantic evolution of language, since Shakespeare’s Othello, when he wrote about having reason to “cool our raging lusts”.
And then it hit me. Because I didn’t want to hit her. I thought this would be a lesson in language as well as in life. So, I called my niece from the corner and this is the conversation that ensued:
Veoma: What did you mean about taking a chill pill?
Niece: Like, calm down.
Veoma: Where did you get that phrase?
Niece: Like, everyone says it, aunty.
Veoma: Do you know where it came from?
Niece: Like . . . ummm, no.
Veoma: Okay, let’s go back a bit. Do you know Shakespeare?
Niece: Yeh, he’s like that guy who, like, wrote stuff.
Veoma: Good start. Today, we’re going to get to know him a bit better. Reader, it’s been almost three weeks of teaching classic literature to an 11-year-old. She can only use the tablet, laptop or cellphone if she’s searching for something relevant to our Shakespeare summer camp. There’s one hour nightly television: the CBC Evening News.
Yes, I’ve heard her crying and complaining to her parents that she wants to go home, but I’ve also seen a change in the child. Her speech. Her expressions are more idiomatic than idiotic and she can utter an entire sentence without the word ‘like’! Like it?
Slowly coming together
But back to this chill pill thing. It seems as if the powers that be have broken bread and chilled their wills. Compromise more so on one part than the other, but things are slowly coming together.
I saw a Sanitation Service Authority worker this morning and ran towards him and embraced him. He looked at me as if my screws were loose, but this was no time to care. I mean, some of you folks may not know of the worry I speak when it comes to garbage.
You may not care to hear of the garbage I speak, either. But, it was something else, seeing the piles pile up, day after day. The thing is, we all play a societal role.
Below is a Shakespearian beginning. Let’s hope that we’ve come to the end of the drama.
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that low’r’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried – Richard III, Act I, Scene I
Veoma Ali is an author, broadcaster, advertising exec and most important, a karaoke lover.
