You have to be careful what you say (or tweet or post) nowadays.
Hardly a day passes without news of someone taking noisy offense at something said (or tweeted or posted) by someone else.
The old bromide seems no longer to apply: “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
If parents and schoolteachers don’t prepare kids to handle insult that way anymore, the reason probably is that the lesson seldom lasts into adulthood.
Deliberate or careless?
People always have said offensive things and always will, sometimes deliberately, sometimes carelessly. Sometimes only the offended see the offense.
In any case, apology is required.
Some apologies are straightforward: “I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”
Some hedge: “I’m sorry if something I said hurt anyone’s feelings.”
And some reroute blame: “I’m sorry if anybody misunderstood what I said.”
Old-timers, still puzzled by trigger warnings on college campuses, must take special care to avoid unwitting ensnarement in the offense-apology cycle.
How do you know what might irk a young adult who considers flip-phones prehistoric and can’t imagine research without Google?
An office move makes this old-timer confront the quandary now.
As part of an ownership change described here earlier, Oil & Gas Journal and affiliates moved from the underutilized floor of a building in Uptown Houston to appropriately sized space in the Westchase District (OGJ, June 10, 2019, p. 14).
The staff now occupies part of the Houston campus of the French geophysical contractor CGG.
The compound is pleasant. It’s a quadrangle of buildings around a well-treed park with a fountain and benches popular with smokers. Most OGJ offices have a view. There’s a cafeteria, dry cleaner, and gym. The coffee’s free.
And this old-timer has been boasting to younger coworkers—nearly everyone—that OGJ now works amid doodlebuggers.
Some coworkers didn’t know that “doodlebugger” is slang for geophysical worker—technically, a member of a seismic-survey crew in the field. But the label naturally expands to embrace anyone involved with geophysics, like calling anyone involved with drilling a driller.
Among the brainiest doodlebuggers, by the expanded definition, are geophysicists. Of these, CGG employs many. Many of them look young.
So an old guy has to be careful.
Do geophysicists still call themselves doodlebuggers? If not, do the younger among them consider the word offensive?
It’s possible. The frivolity of “doodlebugger” clashes with the sophistication of geophysics.
A lavishly degreed professional able to perform full-waveform inversion and infer rock properties from 3D seismic data might not like being called a doodlebugger. If so, how regrettable.
The word is fun to pronounce. And it harks back to a time when everyone except geophysicists considered seismic practice arcane, technologically closer to water dowsing than oil and gas drilling.
That wasn’t so long ago. Some of the most professional fun this editor had in his less administratively laden past was writing about geophysics.
It was fun because writing about geophysics is difficult. And it was fun because geophysics embodies a story important to the oil and gas business: the movement of once-marginal, scientifically and technically rich activities into the mainstream of upstream decision-making.
High respect
To this editor, “doodlebugger” is an appellation of high respect. This editor thinks geophysicists should relish the moniker. He thinks they should wear tee-shirts that say, “Doodlebuggers Migrate” or “Doodlebuggers Have the Time”—and wear them proudly and let others wonder.
But if this editor keeps spouting about doodlebuggers around OGJ’s new quarters, will any of the affable neighbors—especially the younger ones—take offense?
You never know. Sensitivities change in communities you’ve lost touch with. You have to be careful.
So if this column offends geophysicists down the hall or anywhere, this editor is sorry. He made a mistake.
But the offense could have been worse. Even this old guy knows not to stretch idiom to the point of calling geophysicists “jug hustlers.”
