“Look at this,” I said to Mrs. Diesel as we sat enjoying our Big Fat Tacos at a local eating establishment. I pointed to the newspaper article I was reading. “There’s a campaign to get people to stop using the word ‘retard.’”
“That’s retarded,” Mrs. Diesel said.
“I know,” I replied. “You can’t make people stop using the word ‘retard.’ ‘Retard’ is just a great word. It might be my favorite word ever. Retard. It’s just funny.”
“It’s the a-r-d ending that makes it funny,” she observed.
“Retard. RE-tard.” I stifled a laugh. “It’s just an inherently funny word. You can’t make me stop using it. Remember that scene in Tropic Thunder?”
“You never go full retard,” said Mrs. Diesel.
“People got all upset about that scene. And they weren’t upset that Robert Downey, Jr. put on black face to play Ving Rhames; they were upset because his character used the word ‘retard.’ Man, people are stupid.”
“Retards,” Mrs. Diesel agreed.
“And they certainly can’t make me stop using the word ‘retarded.’ It’s a perfectly good word. I mean, what does flame retardant do?”
“It stops fires.”
“It retards them,” I corrected. “And once the fire is out, it’s been retarded. ‘Hey, Bill, are you guys still working on that fire?’ ‘No, Jim, that fire is retarded.’ See, that’s a perfectly valid use of the word.”
“True.”
“There’s all kinds of things that you can retard. ‘Man, I’m so glad that flash flood was retarded!’ Or, ‘We were going to go to the John Mayer concert, but it was retarded.’”
“Uh huh.”
I’m going to start an organization called Humor Writers for Saving the Word ‘Retard.’ When I get through, their little campaign will be retarded.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“You know it,” I declared. “This has got to be retarded. I mean, I understand that people find the word offensive, but ‘retard’ isn’t like ‘nigger.’”
“Because it’s funny,” Mrs. Diesel said.
“Yeah. The word ‘nigger’ isn’t inherently funny. But ‘retard’, come on! Also, I don’t think you get to say, ‘You can’t use this word to describe us, and you also can’t use it for anything else.’ I mean, if people who have Downs Syndrome or whatever don’t want to be called retarded, that’s fine. But then that frees up the word to be used for run-of-the-mill stupid people. You can’t say, ‘We’re not retarded and nobody else is either.’ Somebody’s got to be retarded. It’s just too great a word not to be used. Again, take the word ‘nigger.’ Black people use the word ‘nigger’ all the time, but they won’t let anybody else use it. They’re saying, ‘Hey, that’s OUR word. Which is fair enough. They’ve laid claim to the word and nobody else can use it. But if they were to stop using the word, that would free it up to used for other things. It’s like squatter’s rights.
“Uhhhh…”
By this time, we were in the car driving home.
“Look at that pile of grape vines that they pulled out,” I said. “Those things are so weird looking.”
“Yeah, they are.”
“They’re just oddly shaped and gnarly,” I went on. “Sorry, can I still use the word ‘gnarly’ to refer to things that are gnarled? I wouldn’t want to offend any gnarly surfer dudes.”
“That’s different,” Mrs. Diesel said. “The surfer dudes appropriated that word for themselves.”
“Well so did the re – those other people!” (The kids were in the back seat of the car, and we had slipped back into parent-speak.) “I mean, they didn’t take the word themselves, but it was a perfectly good word that was applied to them because they’re ‘developmentally retarded.’ And if we’re going to let, you know, those people tell us what we can’t call them, then they need to come up with an alternative. But they can’t.”
“Because they’re too that,” she added.
“Exactly. If we didn’t come up with a word for them, they wouldn’t know they’re any different from us.”
…
“Anyway, it’s a funny word,” I mumbled to myself. “Retard. REtard.”