“Good lord! What happened to you? Did you fall off your bike?”
“I was thrown off, actually. Someone driving on the wrong side of the road hit me. Luckily, I didn’t break any bones. But it was scary. It was too close to call.”
“Too close to call? You mean it was a close call, don’t you?”
“What’s the difference between the two?”
“When you have a ‘close call’, you have a narrow escape. Something bad was about to happen to you, but you somehow managed to avoid it.”
“I see. So, ‘close call’ has the same meaning as ‘close shave’?”
“That’s right! We almost didn’t make it to the examination hall. It was a close call.”
“My friend missed being hit by a bus by inches. It was a close shave.”
“The doctor said if we had delayed taking my grandfather to the hospital by another ten minutes, he would have suffered a stroke. It was a close call.”
“Now tell me, what does ‘too close to call’ mean?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? When you say an election is too close to call...”
“Now, I remember. It means it’s a tight election; one in which it’s difficult to predict who the winner will be. At the halfway point, the two athletes were running neck and neck. The race was too close to call.”
“Good example. Who will win today’s match? I’ve no idea. It’s too close to call. You don’t look too good. Why don’t you go home and take some rest?”
“No way! I was in bed all morning. Hey, what’s this? A letter?”
“Do me a favour. Post it on your way home.”
“No problem. I don’t think I’ve been near a post box in a while. Who writes letters these days? By the way, your ‘r’ in ‘Mr’ looks like an ‘x’. Do you want to correct it?”
“There’s no need to. You know that it’s not my handwriting. It’s my friend’s.”
“The one from America? Doesn’t he know how to write an ‘r’?”
“I’m sure he does. But he’s addressed the letter to ‘Mx Smith’ and not ‘Mr Smith’.”
“Mx? What does it mean?”
“The abbreviation ‘Mx’ when used before names is pronounced ‘mix’. People have started using it instead of the usual ‘Mr’, ‘Mrs’, ‘Miss’, etc.”
“But why? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Because unlike ‘Ms’, ‘Mr’, etc., ‘Mx’ is a gender neutral title. When you see a letter addressed to Mx Smith, you’re not sure if the person is a man or a woman.”
“So when you use this gender neutral title, I guess you write only the person’s last name.”
“I suppose so. If you include the person’s first name everyone will know whether it’s a man or a woman.”
“I see. Some people put a full stop after ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’ and some people don’t. So...”
“Actually, both are acceptable. Americans tend to add a full stop after ‘Mr’, ‘Mrs’, etc. The British, don’t.”
“My father always follows British English. He thinks British English is superior than...” “You don’t say that something is ‘inferior than’ or ‘superior than’ something else. The two words are always followed by ‘to’. I’ve always felt inferior to my sister.”
“Really? I’ve always felt superior to mine!”
****
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realised it sooner.” Colette
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