Volume CXXXIII, Number 18 March 1, 2002 f

Hyperbole and speech
SARAH RAMEY

This article is about hyperbole. Overstatement. Exaggeration. Etc. We use it, a lot. In this paragraph, I am not using it. Why? To prove a point. What point? Well, funny you ask. It is hard to say. Why hard to say? Well…it's because…I...well...

OK, the reason is "simply" this: I am completely and totally incapable of constructing any kind of sentence without adding flourishes and overstatements. This is in fact a characteristic of our entire generation. We do not seem able to express ourselves in any small way without expressing ourselves in a big huge enormous way, which ultimately seems to suggest that we are terrified of how boring we might turn out to be, were we to express ourselves in humble, simple, normal terms. And this is really too bad.

Let me preface the rest of this by saying that I am well aware that I am the prototypical example/victim of hyperbolic speech. Every sentence (yes, every single last one of them) out of my mouth will be just one more example of the phenomenon I am attempting to describe. So please save your accusations of hypocrisy for all the other moments in my life when I actually deserve them.

Illustrations of this observation:

"I had to get up at the ass-crack of dawn."
Did you? Did you really? At 6:30 a.m., did the dawn's ass crack open and from this fissure you sleepily emerged?

"That class made me want to vomit on myself."
Can you even imagine if you disliked political theory so much that you would be sitting there in class and…"Wow, I really disagree with everyone here. Can't anyone see that if we were only to maneuver our defense budget in such a way that… oh wait… oh man... oh NO! BLEEEEHHHHH!!"
"Oh my God, I ate so much I'm going to explode."

Explode? Have we just lost touch with what our words actually mean? To explode in the dining hall is perhaps a more dramatic action than we are imagining when we make such offhand remarks. I assure you that when I say this at dinner, as I often do, I am not imagining myself bursting into a fiery ball of flame next to the sundae bar. (Ha-if I did, do you think the lights in Thorne would go into party mode to add to the effect? That would be neat.)

So you all know, there are a good 11 or 12 people on this campus, each of whom I consider and advertise as the Best Person I Have Ever Met. And conversely, a typical Sarah Ramey comment:

"Guys…I'd really have to say that Ronda Phelpsberger is definitively the worst person at Bowdoin College."

"I though Brad Von Schneidel was definitively the worst person you knew."
"Oh yeah, he sucks… huh….whoooaaa, if John Von Schneidel and Ronda Phelpsberger had kids, a) they would probably name them something equally as nauseating such as Sandy or Chet, b) they could hyphenate their last name and make it "Phelpsberger-Von Schneidel" in one moment of glorious hilarity and c) Sandy and Chet would be the two most excruciating people with whom humanity, in all its history, has ever been burdened. And that includes Carrot Top, Flanders, and G. Dubya." (Sorry, Todd. But dude, you've got worse things coming to you in the wake of this week's Patriotism. Good luck with that.)

But anyway, why this need for total exaggeration to the point of absurdity? Is it just because we don't have anything truly alarming in our own lives? We create an abstract, fantastical threat to make us feel as if we are pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps and really toughing something out?
"Sarah, are you sick?"

"Oh man, you don't even know. The bubonic plague is but a wee kiddie virus in comparison to the demon-creature that is currently wreaking havoc on my immune system. At any minute now, I'd say it is well within the realm of possibility that my face will just fall off. Fall right off. I'm not kidding. Starting with my eyes. Then maybe my teeth, quickly followed by my disease-ridden nose."

Or like I said before, are we just worried that we won't be able to hold anyone's attention otherwise?

"The apple I ate at lunch was pretty big" becomes "Yo, I had the most ginormous apple at lunch today. You don't even know."

A clever little amalgamation of words that, while cute and perhaps mildly amusing, is entirely unnecessary and misrepresentative. It is as if "gigantic" or "enormous" could not fully capture the enormity of an apple.

And it is essential to point out that I really "don't even know;" I cannot even begin to conceive of what it would be like to know how super-gigantor-enormous that apple was.

While I know very few people who have escaped from this bizarre trend's clutches, it really isn't some tragic, irreparable flaw of Generation X .(Wait, are we even Gen X? I think I've asked that question before and I always turn my ears off immediately after my mouth stops…I feel that I do that a lot…"Hi, nice to meet you..." Di doo di doo di doo 'EAR SHUT DOWN COMPLETED'…anyways, what generation are we? How about Generation Awesome? I mean if we don't have a name, Generation Awesome gets my vote.)

So, the sad truth of it all, for me, is really the personal realization that no one believes or takes me seriously now. I'm the boy who cried wolf. But a girl. Who cried that her history exam was so difficult she was seriously considering flushing her face down the toilet for approximately eight hours.