Morning Stories

Ouch. That wasn’t my intention. And I truly mean that. But somehow, the headline slipped through my fingers — effortlessly, almost mischievously. I can’t quite explain how. And perhaps it’s better not to try.

Some words are born with heavy baggage. “Decision” is one of them. When a word carries that much emotional mortgage, life is hardly sugarcoated. And to make matters worse, even the word itself can’t hold together.

“This surgeon really messed up,” someone in the audience said. “And what about that nurse? She’s even worse!”

“Don’t play with the dirty words!” That’s what the German singer-poet Franz-Josef Degenhardt warned sixty years ago. Back then, he wasn’t talking about words, but about the so-called Schmuddelkinder — the “grubby kids” of society.