A Caring Chat

Bizarro is brought to you today by Well Talking.

I went to Catholic school so in addition to a deep shame of my body and an overwhelming sense of guilt about sex, I have a better-than-average understanding of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Consequently, I have a lot of pet peeves about the way people speak. “Eggs over easy,” however, is not one of the phrases that bothers me. It is such an old term that I don’t care that it is incorrect; at this point it is just the name of a dish.

But the expression “I could care less,” drives me nuts. Primarily because it means the opposite of what the person saying it means to say. We commonly use this term when we do not care about something, as in, “I could care less if my ex-wife drops dead.” Yet if you truly don’t care, you care so little that you could not care less. On the other hand, I could care less if my mother drops dead because I actually do care about her. I could easily care less than I already do. Hence, it would be possible for me to care less.

Correctly used, I care so little about Justin Bieber that I literally could not care less. So if you don’t care about something, “I couldn‘t care less” is the proper phrase. To say “I could care less” means the exact opposite of what you are trying to say. Simple.

Let’s all practice the correct useage of this phrasology and meet her again to tomorrow to say about how it go.