"Bless Her Heart"
Once the kids were safely dropped off at school, this one-time stay-at-home mom had lots of opportunity to coffee klatch. These gab fests would eventually make their way to a sentence that began with "Bless her heart." Instantly, my antennae would go up because a juicy bit of gossip was about to be revealed. A cheating husband, less-than-stellar children, or the expanding width of a rear end were all fair game if it was preceded by "Bless her heart." What is the point of "bless her heart" and other "tee-ups"? After all, a blessing is a good thing, right? Wrong, not when it is instantly followed by some snarky comment. Like the author of "Why Verbal Tee-Ups Often Signal Insincerity" I cringe when someone says to me "Don't take this the wrong way . . . " I mean you know what's coming. Professor James Pennebaker asserts these "tee-ups" are preludes to criticism and worse. "Language experts have...