Content-Type: text/shitpost

When Katara was small, maybe around six years old, she asked me what “fine” meant. I said it meant “good”. She was puzzled. “Then why do people only say something is fine when they are angry about it?” Huh, yeah, they do that a lot, don't they? Good point, kid! I had to revise my answer.

I realized there was a good chance that my kids had been misinterpreting what I meant when I said something they suggested was fine, because I don't use that word in that way: “Is it okay if I clean this up after dinner?” “Yeah, fine.” Did they hear it as passive-aggressive sarcasm?

(Uh oh, now I have to check to see if I do use it the way I think I do. A quick sampling of blog articles suggests that most or all my uses of “fine” are sincere.)

This reminds me a bit of the moment, decades ago, when I realized that when my sister said “Could you please do (something)” she did not mean to suggest that she was exasperated with my not having done it yet. But for some reason that's what the initial ‘C’ (instead of ‘W’) meant to me.