Actual Reality, or Whatever You "Call" It? 04/04/25 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I was recently invited to be one of the supervising adults at an overnight youth airsoft game; my son was attending, so it made sense. We have a couple airsoft guns already, but I thought it might be interesting to consider adding to the arsenal, so I headed down to the local Walmart to see what they had in stock. Those who are familiar with Walmart will know that the sporting goods section holds the BB guns and air rifles, and the toy section holds the Nerf stuff. Airsoft is between these two, so I checked in both sections--and found no airsoft. Standing in the BB gun section, I was ready to quit and leave, when a young employee wandered in pushing a cart full of product. To be thorough, I asked him if they had any airsoft guns. His reply was to pull out his corporate-issued digital device and search for "airsoft". He poked at the screen for far too long (seriously, I could have searched walmart.com with my poor metal-box-store phone reception and figured it out faster than he did), then looked up at the aisle numbers, and motioning to the BB guns / air rifles we were right in front of, he finally said: "This right here is what we're calling our airsoft section." Being the gruff literalist that I am, I challenged him on this statement. "These are BB guns, I've already looked at all of them. What you mean to say is that you have no airsoft guns. You don't even carry airsoft pellets. This right here is the BB gun section." He did not answer me. In fact, he didn't even look at me. He just stared at his official corporate phone thingy for a few more moments, and then went back to his stocking cart. I guess I was being too confrontational? Is anything less than compliance, complacency, or agreement not within bounds, socially speaking? Are people not worth talking to if they don't agree with you? It's quite possible--probable even--that I'm reading way too much into this brief interaction. Instantly, I was uncomfortable with the fact that my fellow human found it acceptable to use the words, "what we're calling" in this way. The phrase rolled out of his mouth comfortably, naturally even. These were the words his brain presented as a valid way of communicating! As if an individual or group could simply say, "reality is [x], but we're calling it [y]," and now my reality would or should bend to fit that statement. Transport the concept over to the produce section. Let's say I'm looking for kumquats, but all I see are apples and bananas. There are no empty slots, nothing out of stock. I already know I'm in a general fruit section with items that are related to one another logically, but I want a specific item. So, I ask an employee if they carry kumquats. He pulls out his phone and does a search, then looks around, sweeps both hands wide to encompass the entire area, and says, "we're calling this our kumquat section." Now, he didn't say, "this is our fruit section," he's literally claiming that this is the section for kumquats. There are none, and there won't be any coming in for restock; they don't sell them. But he wants to say that his and the store's claim is that this is the kumquat section. In whose mind would such nonsense be an acceptable application of logic and reason? Do they think the customer wants to be told that the [x] they're asking about IS [y]? Not even a suggestion of a similar replacement item--no, [x] is literally [y]. Am I missing something, and people now actually want this sort of mental mollycoddling? Of course, you could carry the discussion further into the areas of social science, absolute truth, religion, etc.; and those would all be good things to examine. But at a very surface level, I find it disconcerting that a person could so easily and comfortably use the mind-bending phrase, "what we're calling", in the way it was used. Which is why I'm venting about it on gopher, of course. The airsoft fight went well, and they had a lot of extra rifles for people to use (we only have handguns). Everyone had fun, no one got hurt, and we even got to do a little fishing in the morning. The weather was absolutely beautiful for sleeping outside; cool but not cold, humidity mixed with the wind of a passing storm, distant thunder but no rain. I'm glad that over time, I'll forget the misinformed Walmart associate and remember the camping.