This piece contains two Easter Eggs. Bonus points to anyone who spots them. Belated Happy Easter!
One of the situations in the story I began last week raises a question.
Until someday in the future, it doesn’t officially beg a question. That’s something different, until we completely give up. I bring that up because I watched a documentary the other day that for all appearances was the kind that would avoid the mistake made when most people say, “That begs the question.”
“Begging the question” means you offer a conclusion based on an unproven original premise. It’s circular logic. Here’s a probably imperfect example: In-N-Out hamburgers are the best because the cows they’re made from don’t eat cocaine. To accept this statement you have to accept that there are some cows out there enriching the cartels, that In-N-Out cows are part of a drug-free America and that cocaine makes the end product worse. How would we know that?
This (the “begging” vs. “raising,” not the cows hopped up on goofballs.) is a lost cause, because anyone who argues about this anymore is probably just trying to appear smarter than you. In our defense, people saying “begs the question” are trying to sound more intellectual than those who are perfectly content to say “raising” a question.
Meanings evolve, and “begs the question” is almost certainly going to be accepted even by the eggheads as just another way of saying “raising the question.” RIP original meaning.
The question I’m raising, or if you’re going to insist on doing it wrong, “begging,” is whether someone who has graduated from high school should ever pursue someone still accountable to the morning bell on campus.
I should first acknowledge that I am aware this is a weird question to ask 42 years later. I don’t think we’re ever too old, however, to look into our pasts and notice the ways we negotiated our trail and how we handled our challenges. This is just one of those moments.
So I hold it as a good question, and that the answer is “probably not.” The presence of “probably” allows for exceptions, but “probably” shows an awareness that two people are living in completely different worlds. People do make that work. My own parents did. My mother graduated in 1950 and a week later married my dad. That kind of matrimonial association so soon after graduation was more common then, but a good friend of mine who donned a cardinal cap and gown during the same ceremony I did left high school in a confirmed relationship with a girl still awaiting her senior year. He was grandfathered in, I suppose, for having an already existing relationship.
“Grandfathered” or “grandfathering” is another term that has evolved. The meaning is more or less the same as it was originally, but its origins stem from late 19th Century American racism.
Did I just kill this piece’s momentum by bringing that up? So it goes.
There is also the legal problem of an adult dating someone who is, according to the law, a child. That is a problem if, as one my favorite podcasters puts it, they engage in “Mommy and Daddy times.” Given my religious predilection at the time, I was highly unlikely to do that. I originally wrote “never,” but replaced it with “highly unlikely” because I vote “No” on absolutes. Even though the kind of romantic moves I made at that time in my life were the kind that put women in a mood to consider their other options, a change in life plans wasn’t completely out of reach.
All of this raises the question, or maybe it begs it, “Was that the last high school girl I ever tried to date?”
This begs the question, "What is the point of this article?"? I am not sure I have a clue? Which begs the question, "Why did I read it all the way through?"? I am not sure?
Which begs the question, "If I was sure, what is the answer?" Maybe the cluelessness is your point? If so, you are evil!!
Good article!