Chafe Happens

I had this weirdly self-righteous English teacher in high school, “Mr. H” (in case he Googles himself I really don’t want to give him the smug satisfaction of knowing he made lifelong, albeit bad, impressions on his students), who gave the class vocabulary words to learn every day. He also wore a belt buckle with his intials on it. Shudder. So, instead of giving us real words that might actually be impressive, like obstreperous or lascivious, which I learned in 10th grade English, we learned word origins like “MG stands for Morris Garages” and “Cole Slaw means cold salad” and “Volkswagon means wagon or CAR for the folks, or PEOPLE; the people’s car”. Then we would be quizzed and this vocabulary would count for 50% of our total grade. This was also the kind of class where you could make a papier mache Holden Caulfield and call it a book report. Finally! An English class where I could put my puffy-painting skills to good use! So of course I ended the year with the only A+ I’ve ever gotten, mostly by memorizing crap that I am pretty sure was in one of those bathroom reading books.     Which brings me to how much I hate the new Volkswagon ads for “Safe Happens”. They are jarring and I can’t deal. It’s like the surprise appearance of the Energizer bunny back in the day. Clever, that’s great. But not ever like “WHAT THE HELL?”, which is how these spots make me feel.  Picture it. Sicily. Two guys talking about how one guy like, says “like” too much and like, that’s annoying and then like POWBANGAIRBAG! A pickup truck almost made you die! Now picture two couples who are talking about crying at the movies and then SCREECHCRASHSIDEIMPACTCRUMPLEZONE! Thank God we were in a Jetta, we could have met our doom! What bothers me most – the cherry on top of this irritation sundae - is the button at the end of each of these ads where one of the passengers says “HOly SH–” and the commercial cuts at that moment. Realism? Maybe. The entire commercial is going for realism – accidents can happen at any moment, especially when you have annoying friends in the car. And realistically, people do swear under duress. But it makes my skin crawl that it’s implied but edited. Not that I want to hear an alternate word, I just would rather not see the entire commercial. That swear bothers me for reasons that my finger can’t put itself upon. But if you want to start a healthy debate you can see them all for yourself, here.