on impact

q. shenaynay

Dell provides us with today's installment in the continuing saga of how impactfully our culture has been impacted by the joint efforts of Oprah and Junior Leaguers everywhere to impact modern vernacular with the introduction of revisionary usages of the word impact:

Dell Announces Battery Recall

On August 15, 2006 Dell announced a
voluntary recall of certain notebook
batteries. To determine if your battery
is impacted, please go to.....

etc.

Have you noticed how impact has morphed into such a genteel and helpful word these days? A kindler and gentler impact for the new millennium, I suppose. He doesn't go BANG or CRASH like the old impact of yore. He doesn't total your car, leave bruises, or affect your deductible. Oh, no. He's reformed now.

I guess you could say he's not as... impactful. Go ahead if you like; I won't say that because I just won't say that. Because I just can't say impactful with a straight face.

(Just for fun, try to imagine George Washington or John Wayne or Sonny Pyles saying, "That was really totally impactful to me." heh heh heh.)

See, I was thinking that if my Dell battery had suffered impact of some sort, it's highly unlikely I could even be reading Dell's notice on my Dell screen. Seems to me like an impacted battery would have impacted my usage of my computer on impact.

But what do I know? All the dictionaries in my house are old and respectable. They are not politically correct like the ones dressed up in bright, glossy dustjackets down at Barnes & Noble. No, no. They are cantankerous old guys full of crunchy, wild words. Their impact goes Crash! and Bang! and could even send you to the hospital or beyond. Their impact was effective: the asteroidal impact of Wiley E. Coyote, Boris Badenov, and Bugs Bunny, not this new affective impact of, say, Barney or Teletubbies or Noggin-you-name-it.

I guess I should watch Oprah more and maybe join the Junior League so I can be impactively impacted by more broad-minded and politically correct usages of impact in all its new impactfulness.