By BERNADETTE LAURITZEN
Executive Director
Local senior centers

Dear Lovely People,

This is a light-hearted letter to uphold the character and reputation of one of my seniors. I will not mention the name of the senior as I have written an article once before mentioning their wonderfulness and I believe there was a petition to have me fired.

I will also apologize to English teachers everywhere that read this as this may indeed kill a tiny piece of their soul.

Words matter, in fact letters matter and there are many times that just a letter or two or perhaps a non-existent comma could have life altering consequences.

Recently, some fantastic students came over to interview senior citizens and the ever fantastic Carol Clark ran their stories in the paper. I’m sure friends and family alike were over the moon.

The problem was an N word, well not so much an N word, as a work that needed to be missing the letter N as it changed the total context of the sentence. Don’t cancel culture me yet – hang on a moment.

The senior stated that her spouse had been a dam engineer. A dam engineer, according to list my source geoengineer.org is “a professional field that addresses issues related to the design, construction and maintenance of dams.

The sentence read, “He was a damn engineer.” While I chuckle out loud every time I think about it, rest assured she would NEVER utter a swear word. If you aren’t sure what a damn engineer is, you might need to consult with a salty adult you know. I would like to keep my day job a bit longer so I will refrain from my personal definition, although I assume we may all know one.

While I would love to continue and say I swear on everything that is holy that my senior is an upstanding member of society and that I may have Doug (hidden reference here) myself in too deep already, I willn’t take any more of your time.