One Time, One Meeting

“Whoops!” wrote a friend the other day, having just sent me an e-mail message intended for someone else. Studying that word on my screen, I was reminded of an experience that occurred some fifty years ago.

At the time, I was splayed face-down on a sweat-scented wrestling mat. Straddling me was Grant Wilke, a tough competitor whose strength and wrestling skills far surpassed my own. With my belly squashed against the mat and Grant’s weight pressing firmly into my lower back, I attempted what high-school wrestlers call an “escape.” Rising like a cobra and twisting backward, I inadvertently gave Grant a sharp elbow in the ribs.

“Oops!” said I.

“Don’t say ‘oops’, Ben,’” Grant replied, casting a disdainful look in my direction. Not only had my clumsy move failed of its purpose. I had also offended Grant’s sense of what a wrestler is supposed to be thinking, feeling, and saying. “Take that!” might have been more to the point. “Oops!” was not in the protocol.

Had I looked into my experience that afternoon, I might have divined that I was not cut out to be a wrestler. And had I looked into my offending word, I might also have made a few discoveries. “Oops” and its variant “Whoops” are words of unknown origin. They became current in American English in the 1920s. “Whoops” may allude to “whoop,” as in “war whoop,” and “Oops” may be its contraction. In any event, both words contain a long, low vowel, a plosive consonant (“p”), and a terminal sibilant (“s”), which together create a sound not unlike that of tire being punctured. Or one’s pride, or poise, or public image.

To grammarians “Oops” is known as an interjection. Expressive, colorful, and often illogical in context, interjections reveal much about those who use them. If you say “Stone the crows!” when surprised, you are probably British and not as young as you used to be. Likewise “Holy mackerel, Andy!” which Kingfish frequently exclaimed on the Amos ‘n’ Andy Show, but only people of a certain age would say today. “Jeepers creepers!” my wife, Robin, likes to say, despite my telling her that no one says “Jeepers creepers” anymore. “Jeepers,” she said last week, employing the shorter form.

Beyond the age and social background of the user, interjections also reveal the speaker’s present state of mind. In the case of “oops,” that state might be described as embarrassed, apologetic, and desirous of atonement. By contrast, “Uh-oh” connotes mild apprehension, “Yikes” astonishment, and “Ugh” disgust. Whatever the state being disclosed, however, interjections disclose it before we’ve had time to think about it, or modify it with thought, or disguise it with discursive language. At any given moment, our interjections may be no more than habitual verbal reflexes or escape valves for powerful feelings. But for those of us inclined to introspection, they can also provide clues to our ever-changing mental states and the causes that engender them. Rents, as it were, in the curtain of language, they can show us to ourselves.

In this respect, as in their spontaneous nature, interjections have a part to play in Zen practice. In his book Zen Action, Zen Person, the philosopher T.P. Kasulis describes Zen as a “prereflective” practice, by which he means a practice whose locus is the moment, prior to reflection, when a mental event occurs. That event might be a sensation, a passing thought, or an image from the past. Whatever it is, we experience it directly, without the mediation of conceptual thought. If we are diligent in the practice, we learn to experience ourselves and the world in this way, whether we are sitting on our cushions or going about our daily business. And interjections can help us, insofar as they constitute a direct, unmediated response to our experience. Knowing as much, Japanese Zen teachers have sometimes used interjections as wake-up calls, one of their favorites being the word kwatz, which has no extractable meaning. Uttered forcefully in a samurai’s basso profundo, that bizarre word can restore the sleepiest practitioner to the here and now.

Of course it is often more pleasant to live in a dream of the past, a dream in which nothing has changed, and we are the same, unchanging selves that we were at the time. So it was one evening a few months back, when Robin and I sat on our couch, looking at my high-school yearbook. Arriving at the Sports section, we found black-and-white photos of my wrestling team. There, in his River Kings wrestling uniform, was Grant Wilke, who would go on to become a Marine Sergeant Major, a fire marshal, and a respected community leader. And there was I, an athletic-looking lad with conspicuous biceps, respectable pecs, and a calm, determined mien. No Adonis, to be sure, but a force to be reckoned with.

“You had a good build then,” said Robin.

Oops.

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*T.P. Kasulis, Zen Action, Zen Person ( University of Hawaii Press, 1981), 56-60; 101.

No stranger to Asian disciplines, Grant Wilke holds a black belt in Shorin Ryu and Aikijujutsu.