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Senior Moments

Category: General / Topics: Language, Meaning

Acronyms

by Dan Seagren

Posted: August 17, 2008

The other day my wife got an email and she was asked if she ever was involved in PEO…

Recently we received an email from former friends we haven’t seen or been in touch with for many years. I went online and discovered their email address and now we are in touch again. The other day my wife got an email and she was asked if she ever was involved in PEO.

Since we had never heard of PEO, I looked it up. I found 26 PEO acronyms. So, which one was it? This started the process of elimination. Was it Pentagon Engineering Office? Pacific Economic Outlook? Plant Equipment Officer? Primer Estado Oculto? Most of the acronyms didn’t fit. But one did: Philanthropic and Educational Organization for Women (PEO International).

Since both wives had lived overseas where they knew each other, this was the most logical possibility but we won’t know for sure until we ask Priscilla what PEO really stands for.

Maybe you have never had a moment bewildered by an acronym but many of us have. Let’s take a peek at a few. TGTBT—too good to be true. LOL—lots of love. How about this one? PEO—Protect Each Other. These are used in so many ways. Our church is FPCC (which we can even write on our contribution checks). Our denomination used to be ECCA but was shorted to ECC when we belatedly realized we were an international organization.

Ah, yes. Every state has a two letter abbreviation such as AZ and MA. To make it even more complicated, there are 850,000 US and Canadian postal codes and more than 600,000 human-edited definitions. Alas, the Acronym Finder contains more than 4 million acronyms and abbreviations (go to www.acronymfinder.com for more information).

In reading about scammers recently we were cautioned about responding to telephone numbers with area codes 809, 876 and 284 and to lookout for 500 and 700. Now, not all of these numbers are nefarious as many belong to decent people. However, scammers sometimes use them because they are outside the US and are relatively untouchable by the FTC. Yes, the Federal Trade Commission can only do so much. Not only could we be duped into something less than meritorious, but our phone bill could ascend precipitously.

We seniors are all acquainted with the AARP and most of us know the AAA (Triple A). And we also have an idea what the CIO and the AFL do. We old timers remember PTA, WPA and PWA (remember what we used to say: Pa’s Working Again). That’s a bit more humane than WPA (We Poke Along).

I also remember as a kid when we held Bible Camp in an old CCC camp (I believe that stood for Civilian Conservation Corp). This is where we lived in barracks which became rather noisy later at night. The camp manager once stuck his head in the door and bellowed, "This is Christy speaking. There’ll be no sports tomorrow." There was an immediate response by one of the campers, "This is Sport speaking. There’ll be no Christy tomorrow."

Memories. Such a wonderful invention. What would we do without them? When familiar acronyms surface, we often savor their memories. Fortunately, we need not know all four million abbreviations and acronyms but knowing a few (or even many) is helpful. Besides, not knowing acronymic writing (texting) our grandkids use spares us another learning curve. This of course can let them pull the wool over our eyes which is not always in their best interest – or ours.

Adios. Fare thee well. So-long. Tra-la. BCNU. BYE4NOW. CU LTR. LOL . . . .



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Dan Seagren is an active retiree whose writings reflect his life as a Pastor, author of several books, and service as a Chaplain in a Covenant Retirement Community.

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Posted: August 17, 2008   Accessed 118 times

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