Dear Sarah,

I was reading some of the archives today and came across the entry about the difference between “flammable” and “inflammable.”
Before some time in the 1950s, lighter fluid, gasoline trucks, cleaning fluid, and the like were labeled “inflammable.” Then this was changed to “flammable” because people were misinterpreting “inflammable” as “non-flammable.” I don’t know what documentation of this may exist, but I remember the change.

Now a question: What about “any more”/”anymore”?
I thought that it was correct to put “I don’t want any more ice cream.” (adjective)”There isn’t any more butter.” (adjective) “The milk train doesn’t stop here any more.” (adverb) When did it get to be all one word? “I don’t want anymore ice cream” just looks wrong to me. I feel it belongs with “alot” and “alright.” Can you set me straight?

Then there’s the use of “any more/anymore” roughly meaning “recently” or “these days” and heard usually in spoken phrases like “The teenagers sure wear weird clothes anymore” or “She’s become very standoffish anymore.” I think this is dialect from Pennsylvania or New Jersey. What can you tell me about this charming but goofy usage?

“Any more” just seems to need a negative with it. I mean, you could say “Teenagers don’t wear Gunne Sax dresses any more” or “She isn’t very friendly any more” and that would be all right.

Best wishes,
Rag Mama

Dear R.M.,

As far as the one word/two words distinction, “any more” and “anymore” have two distinct meanings and shouldn’t be used interchangeably.Viz. Garner: “While anymore conveys a temporal sense, any more conveys a sense of comparing quantities…or degrees.”For example, “there isn’t any more ice cream” is about a quantity or amount; “we don’t have that flavor anymore” is about passage of time.You can’t reverse them; “there isn’t anymore ice cream” is incorrect, and so is “we don’t have that flavor any more.”The different renderings have different meanings.

“Anymore” meaning “these days” or “of late” is, according to Garner, a regionalism, but not incorrect.He cites Missouri as a place where the usage is “established”; I’ve never heard a Jerseyan say it, and would have guessed that it’s not a northeastern or Mid-Atlantic usage.

Dear Sars,

How do you ask someone out over email, if you’ve only met once and the other person lives hundreds of miles away?

My situation is fairly simple, actually.I met someone from L.A. at a wedding in San Francisco (where I live).We totally hit it off, and I would’ve asked her out that night if she didn’t live in a different city.Instead, we exchanged business cards and agreed to meet up if we were ever in the same zip code.

After talking to my friends, who helped me realize that this woman is probably cooler than anyone I’ve dated in SF, I decided to be proactive because my gut feeling is that she may be interested too.I would call her, but only the email address on her card is up to date (she works at a different company now, and in hindsight I would’ve been better off simply asking for her number).

Setting aside the difficulties of starting a potential LDR from scratch, how do I convey interest to her in a way that’s straightforward but also recognizes the less-than-ideal circumstances?Everything I’ve come up with either sounds too awkward (“if we lived in the same city, I would’ve asked you out already so what now?”), too weird (“I’d like to talk about something that’s more appropriate for the phone than email”), or too presumptuous (“can I come visit you in L.A.?”).

Please help me, I’m not usually this horrible at writing.

Thanks,
One Would Think There’s A Simpler Way

Dear There Is,

Well, it’s not like she doesn’t know where she lives; I think a formal “recognition of the circumstances” is probably not necessary.Email her, tell her you really enjoyed meeting her, mention that you probably should have just asked her for her number in the first place, and then…ask her for her number.

Hi,

My normal sources of advice have responded to this one with:
“Huh.Yeah.That sucks.”I’m hoping that you’ll have some
better insight.

Cowboy is a friend from college who has since become a pretty
steady pen pal.Not a critical part of my daily life, but a
good writer who sends fun and lengthy accounts of his life and
I happily reciprocate.Last summer, I happened to be going to
visit my sister, who lives about an hour and half away from
him.He drove up to meet me, and we spent the day visiting
historic sites, having coffee, and debating the fate of the
Democratic Party (back when that wasn’t a contradiction in
terms), and then made dinner with my sister and her boyfriend
and watched a movie.

I go back home, a thousand miles away, and get an email from
him asking if he can have my sister’s phone number, since he
likes her and wants to hang out some time.Problem is, I
could tell my sister didn’t really like him.She and I are
pretty different, and Cowboy is just the kind of guy who would
get on her nerves, although she was really nice to him for my
sake.So, I ignore his request, and the next one, and just
continue with our email communication as if it never
happened.After the second request, I mentioned it to my
sister and confirmed that he irked her and she definitely
didn’t want to spend any more time with him.

I recently got another email from him, letting me know that
he’s moved to sister’s city, and asking a) if I was planning on
going down to visit her this summer, b) if I’d like to see him
then, and c) if I could pass on her digits, so that he would
have someone to hang out with in the new city.

I’d like to
see him when I’m down there, but I’m not sure it’s possible to
do that and avoid both hurting his feelings and putting my
sister in an awkward situation.Is there any possible way to
confirm yes to (a), arrange yes to (b), and manage to say
(either explicitly or implicitly) no to (c)?Or do I have to
keep this friendship strictly in the email range and avoid
all personal contact?

Thanks,
All I wanted to do was see my sister’s new, adorable puppies

Dear Pup,

I would confirm (a), arrange (b), and continue to ignore (c).And if he still doesn’t take a hint and asks you directly why you won’t give him your sister’s information, tell him that your sister isn’t comfortable with that, period, next topic.

If he presses the point, you can either tell him the truth or raise your brows pointedly and be like, “…Dude.Come on.”I know it’s titanically awkward, but if he’s really not figuring it out and it’s going to cause aggro for you anyway because you have to keep handling him away from that subject?Just tell him the truth.He can make his own friends; not everybody has to like each other.

Dear Sarah D. Bunting,

Recently, I’ve had two strange occurrences happen to me in less than 24 hours of each other. They aren’t really earth-shattering, but my opinion on them, compared to my friends’ and family’s varying opinions, have left me feeling weary of this grand experiment called “humanity.” Dare I say my faith in humankind has been put to the test, and I was simply wondering what your unique take on it is.

Situation 1:
A large convenience-store chain that sells gasoline. Two in the afternoon, I’m on a lunch break from work. I’m at the pump, finishing up my filling, when a car of two middle-aged women pull in near me. I begin to walk towards the store to pay, when they roll down their window and motion for me to come over. I do so, thinking they are asking for directions. The woman driver asks me if I can check under her hood to see if she needs to put water in her radiator. I was taken back by this. I asked her to repeat herself, which she did, and I proceeded to tell her no, I couldn’t do it. (In my head, it sounded more like “Hell, no lady!”) She had a slightly surprised look on her face as I walked away.

Now, I’m a male, and I guess these women assumed I know what goes on under the hood — which I don’t. I never even put my nose under my own hood, let alone a complete stranger’s. Plus, I was dressed in khakis and a button-down shirt, and there was no way I was going to come back to work in stained clothes.

Situation 2:
A grocery store parking lot, the next morning. I parked my car, and was heading towards the entrance. I walked past a woman who had just gotten done loading groceries into her mini-van. She closed the door, and asked me if I needed her cart. I responded by saying no, and kept walking. (I was only shopping for one thing that I could carry by hand.) This woman proceeds to get all huffy, and voices her disgust at how I “couldn’t at least take the cart back to the store” for her.

She’s a middle-aged woman, with enough energy to go shopping, walk to her car, and unload the groceries. Why can’t she finish the job and take the cart back herself?

So here lies the conundrum:

I tell my friends and family about these events and how I responded to them. Almost every single person I told feels that I acted rudely, and that I should have been “a good person” and given these strangers all the help they needed.

I feel that in each situation, I was within my rights to not offer my assistance. In fact, each situation held a set of circumstances that rendered my assistance either impossible (I don’t know anything about engine maintenance, and I can’t show up to work with grease stains on my clothes) or unnecessary (the store was only 25 feet away, and the woman wasn’t handicapped or elderly).

My friends are slowly making me feel like a dick for not helping. Are they correct? Or am I correct in assuming there’s there a limit to how much I’m required to help my fellow humans? (Considering that I’ve never been offered assistance from strangers, and I would NEVER think of asking a stranger for help like these people did.)

Thanks for any input you might offer,
JTH

Dear J,

I don’t think you’re a dick for not helping…but if you responded exactly the way you say you did in the letter, your attitude is maybe not the friendliest.I mean, if I offered you a shopping cart, I wouldn’t do so expecting you to handle a chore for me instead of doing it myself, and if I need help with my car, I’m going to a gas station and not asking some rando, so you’re not in the wrong, exactly…but if if I did ask you in passing if you wanted my cart and you just bit off a flat “no,” I’d kind of wonder what was up your ass.At least say “no thanks” or “I’m good.”

To me, it’s not that you didn’t help.It’s that you were like, “Uch,” about it.If someone rolls up to me on 4th Avenue and is like, “Can you just have a look and see if my radiator is low?”, I’m saying something like, “I seriously wouldn’t know one way or the other, I’m sorry — but there’s a service station right down the block, someone there can probably help you.”

You’re not obligated to help, no; you have your reasons, and that’s fine.But I think it wouldn’t kill you to dial the “I, Self-Sufficient Man, dismiss thee” attitude a few notches and just nicely tell the people in question that you’re in a rush, or you don’t need the cart, thanks anyway, or whatever.

A pleasant response may not have fixed the car, but it wouldn’t have smudged your shirt, either, is my point.

Dear Sars,

I just found out I am about six weeks pregnant. The person I had sex with is an old boyfriend from about eight years ago whom I have been hooking up with occasionally since we broke up.We are both in our late twenties, have the same group of friends and have a pretty friendly relationship.

I am almost certain I will terminate the pregnancy.I feel like I should let the guy know what is going on, but I’m not sure what the point in telling him would be.Maybe I just don’t want to be the only one to feel the repercussions.Is it selfish to tell him, even if I don’t really want his input on what I should do?

Signed,
Confused

Dear Confused,

Yeesh.I’ve never faced that situation myself, but I’ve thought I might have to a couple of times, and fortunately my period always showed up and saved me from having to decide, but…I don’t know what I would have decided, in the end.On the one hand, it seems like the guy has a right to know, because…well, duh.He’s in the situation whether he knows it or not.

But on the other hand, I think you’re right to wonder what purpose it serves, particularly if you have your mind pretty much made up and it’s not so much a discussion as it is an announcement.

It’s sort of hard to put yourself in the guy’s shoes in these cases, in my more limited experience, because your own shoes are a big enough issue that it’s hard to put them aside and try to see things from another perspective…but it’s still worth doing.So: In his position, would I want to know?Because my initial reaction is to say, yes, I would want to know…but if I never knew?If nobody ever let it slip, if I never found out about it later, if nothing really changed, would I really want to know something like that?Would I really be happier for having dealt with that situation?

Happier, probably not.But I still think I would want to know, because I would want to try to take responsibility, whatever that meant.I would want to try to handle the situation like a grownup and be supportive.And in your position, I would want the guy to know so that I wouldn’t be alone with it.Maybe that’s selfish, but if that’s selfish, so is not telling, in its own way — I mean, you’re making a decision about yourself and your life, so “selfishness” is perhaps not the spectrum to use when making this decision.Perhaps “kindness” is the one to use instead, kindness to him and kindness to yourself.Because it’s a difficult choice, and everyone will have their own way of making it, but I don’t know if there’s a “right” here, and in the midst of everything else going on in your head, remind yourself that you’re just trying to do the best you can in a tough spot.

After all that equivocating: I would tell him, myself, but I don’t know everything about the situation, and it’s not I who has to choose.Trust your instincts.

[9/16/05]

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