So many times we say things without truly understanding what they mean--words/phrases/colloquialisms. As I get older, it's starting to irk me more and more whenever I hear someone say something they think is "cool" and have totally missed the mark. Or when someone uses a phrase like "rule of thumb" and doesn't know where it originated and what it meant when it was coined. "Fingers crossed!" and millions of other words and phrases we use everyday have historical, religious, racial, philosophical (etc.) references that we never sought to understand on our own. I bring this up today because of the internet craze called "planking." People are going around and taking pictures of themselves lying flat, face-down and spread-eagle (like a Superman pose) in "weird" places and then post them online. Where does the word planking stem from? Well, an acquaintance on Facebook finally looked it up:
Planking: a term used by slave owners as a method of stacking slaves on a ship. Slave traders stacked slaves on plank beds, face-down on slave ships, hands chained to their waists, and called it "planking the slaves."
I posted this on my Facebook status and it sparked quite a conversation both on and offline, so much so that several friends have taken it upon themselves to research this even further. Here are a couple of other links:
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSlave_ship&h=nAQBFyXdz
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLying_down_game&h=MAQCKsQce
So, let's think before we speak, yes?
