A Good Fit

I know a young lady who is job hunting, just as so many are these days. She lives in Michigan, a state which has been in a depression for 3 years or so. The rest of the country is getting ready to join them. Anyway, she is trained in the law, and thus has many years schooling. She recently received a response from a law firm. They declined to ask her to join them. These things happen. But it was the way they worded it that struck me: "We don't think it is a good fit." I realize that using the language to express oneself is a difficult art. However, people that have gone to school for as many years as professional people do really ought to be able to use the old mother tongue with a bit more facility than evidenced in the above reply. I said as much to She-who-must-be-obeyed. She snorted with contempt. She saw absolutely nothing wrong with expressing possible employment in terms of joinery or the craft of wood working. Nor I, I responded. These are good and fine crafts. But the expression is slang at present. It is a lazy way to express oneself. I was about to add that I thought that the "fit" being talked about was not that of a dovetail tenon, but I thought better of it. She said that it was not slang. I sense that she herself must use it when speaking with her coven of friends. No, I said. It is slang. Professional people, having been schooled so much, should be able to express themselves in a manner that is not redolent of the street corner. (I may point out that we are often at loggerheads on Mother English. I remember once denouncing the business use of : we are in receipt of your letter... To her it was de jure. I, however, said that simply stating "we have received your letter" seems to work on all 12 cylinders. I see no reason to philosophize some esoteric state of being; i.e., the state of Being-in-Receipt, when it comes to talking about getting the mail! It sounds as if they had Martin Heidegger doing their correspondence!) To my mind, a good fit is perfectly good for a quick no thought response, but this grading barely comes up the the level of grade-school graffitti. Do not get the idea that when I say slang, I mean the bold, startling innovative use of language in urban or any other areas. Recall that I embraced Rap music in 1984 - a time when the main music store on the east side of Detroit had exactly 15 tapes total of Rap for sale. I mean "fit" is (1) slang, (2) lazy - a knee-jerk response like "hot enuff for ya?" AND the point which I detest the most is # 2, the laziness. (For example, when Chuck Berry says "When I was motivatin' over the hill", it is language of the genius-type. When someone says "it is a good fit", yawns abound.) If the professionals are lazy and sluggish with language, then why must it amaze us when Johnny can't read, write, or - in the words of AT&T - show the minimum ability to do the rudimentary tasks companies need? She-who-must-be-obeyed would have none of this. She anathematized me, saying I was just like my brother; the brother with jail time she meant, not the other one who has thus far profited by his crimes. Later that day... She was doing a crossword puzzle and asked me in which country Shiraz was located. I said the word sounded Iranian. She had written in "Irani"; I suggested "Farsi", but "Irani" seemed to work. Within 5 minutes there was a news report about a bomb explosion in a southern city in Iran. I grumbled that they were being so miserly of information that they could not tell us the name of the city, so I went to the Internet and hooked up to the Beeb ( my fanciful name for the BBC) The city where the mosque was bombed was Shiraz! The above is true, but sadly has little to do with the rest of the story. You may feel free to regard it as a sub-plot. The point being is that we were in the State of Being-TV-Watchers ( in good business-ese) and had the pixels glowing. There was a show on Animal Planet during which 2 new-age-animal-whisperer-rescuer- types went to the homes of people who were in serious state of being-pet-less, or simply without a pet and in need of same. ( I shall refer to the animal-whisperer-rescuer types as animal maieutics or "midwives" after this, since their job is to "midwive"-in the strict Socratric sense- a true coming together of pet and person. I also had no idea how hard it would be to express this tripe. Whew. Perhaps I should call them "matchmakers" instead.) So the petless tell their sad, sad story. The matchmakers commiserate. The pets-midwives decide to bring some of the four-legged types around, in order that the petless might try them out, so to speak. The petless seem to be strangely unable to go out and scour the countryside for pets. They seem to have developed a form of agoraphobia which renders them unable to exit the domicile to go in search of the cute and the cuddly. So this whole process of matchmaking goes on. There should be some sounds from Fiddler On The Roof, but there aren't. There is no "Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match!" anywhere in ken. The various bundles of joy are scrutinized to a fare-thee-well and, as is to be expected, most are consigned back to the pound or the foyer to the abbatoir or the glue factory or whatever. Finally there comes the magical moment which is the whole rationale for such a show. The petless fall for a cute pup and are petless no longer. The matchmakers smile slyly to each other, secure in the knowledge that the 3 Maria Theresa gold thalers that was the agreed upon fee has been earned and would be credited to their account in Goray, south of Cracow. Every cliche, old saw, tired maxim, and hackneyed phrase has been used by this time. They have described their old pet. They have wondered how any other could replace them. They thought they could never love again. The rent-a-pets brought around did not move their souls. There was no soul-mate, pet wise, as yet. At the very climax ( and I do mean climax ) of joy, when music from "Hits From The Classics" is reverberating, the woman of the petless couple, that woman who is suddenly petless no longer and has discovered that she can love again, said: "It's a great fit!" To her credit, She-who-must-etc. broke out into laughter, repeating the phrase as it it were a Frank Capra film title: "It's A Great...Fit". And no more was said about it.