Look, I didn’t go picking a fight. Honest.

I was there for the funeral of a lovely older lady, Marilyn Nelson. She had been friends with my mother many many, many years ago, and, before you know it, the church had filled up, eyes were wet, and the hymnals were open to “Amazing Grace.” Sure enough, a Political Correctness Pig Pile would be on us before we knew it!

You do know why, right?

The Words.

I don’t care if you are a descendant of the original Hunnewell settlers in Scarborough, or if you are a newer resident who still has not scraped those tiny little whale-adorned Vinyard Steamship Authority stickers off the side window of your BMW and your Massachusetts plates – you know the song “Amazing Grace.” (Or at least you have heard it on an episode of the old “Beverly Hillbillies,” or “Two and a Half Men!”)

And you know “The Words.”

The first few lines are:

“Amazing grace

How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me”

There it is!

The song is about redemption, and about acknowledging one’s shortcomings.

The ultimate in self-surrender, it is thought, is to say, “I am nothing.”

Thus, the line: “… a wretch like me.”

Except, nowadays, the same yuppie suburban societies that are producing Self Esteem Academies masquerading as K-5 schools (everybody gets a trophy in kindergarten soccer; all second-graders self importantly with their names on back of their baseball shirts; everyone told “Good job!” even if “Good effort!” might be smarter) does not approve “ of wretch.”

The lyrics nowadays have been “cleaned up.” Sub “soul” for wretch. Yeecch.

The funeral on Friday at South Gorham Baptist Church was Old School, though.

I like this whole Political Correctness Debate. Elbows can get thrown, but often both sides are right (I am sometimes in the middle between Scarborough Old, and Scarborough New….weird some days….).

The funeral, and wake, of Marilyn Nelson, provided opportunities for several of these WEE-style verbal brouhahas.

One speaker was Fire Chief Mike Thurlow, he of a line of Thurlow after Thurlow after Thurlow down at Pine Point. At some point in the two days of life celebration, Mike had referred to Marilyn as a “great old girl.”

If you have gray in your hair, and perhaps a limp in your step, you recognize that phrase as the ultimate compliment. Chief Thurlow told stories about Mrs. Nelson providing financial accounting work at the fire department at a time when such was sorely lacking. She baked refreshments for firefighters such as her sons Joe and Cleon during late-night battles. She even drove a standard-shift, clutch firetruck up Mitchell Hill Road!!

On the other hand, if you spend your days in an educational ivory tower, perusing reports titled, “The Indirect Impact of School Funding Subsidy Reduction on Core Educational Mission Delivery Items,” you might not dig terms such as “old girl” or “horse” for a human being. You would then pontificate as follows:

“Referring to females over 18 by the term ‘girl’ tends to lessen their accomplishments, and send the wrong message to impressionable females seeking strong role models.”

Well!! There now.

I like some of the Political Correctness movement. I really do. I think, for example, it is OK to get away from phrases such as “slapping him upside the head” when describing how a business manager was able to focus the attention of a new employee.

But in deciding whether to tar and feather verbal offenders of modern sensibilities and sensitivities, we ought to take a cautionary look first at the defendant and his/her history.

In this case, Mike Thurlow was a team manager, while an SHS student, of the first state championship soccer team. He said if the two girl managers didn’t each get two tickets to the title banquet, like he’d been given, he wasn’t going. That was 1973!

Fast forwarding to today, here is a suggestion give the chief a pass on whether he called an 80-year-old woman “great old girl.” His back has more shoe prints of people he has helped boost to gender equality than any of the federal-grant-funded symposiums on Title IX in your doctoral program. Dues paid.

In the l980s, the Scarborough Fire Department and then-Chief Bob Carson were recruiting volunteers. Marilyn was in a meeting with me and and the Chief. One of her sons, Joe or Cleon, was there too. I looked at her and joked: “Marilyn, how about you?!” She said, “Not me. I’m just auxiliary.” This was at a Legislative meeting.

A School Board member overhear the comment and said, “I hate to see these good people sell themselves short.” She thought Marilyn was being shy, didn’t feel she could handle regular firefighter work like men could, and was “just an auxiliary” member. (Marilyn had forgotten to add the word: “…nowadays.”)

You could have cut the thick syrupy condescension with a knife and buttered your toast down at the old Paulsen’s Coffee Shop.

The Political Correctness movement is smart, and agile. But sometimes too quick like Bruce Lee on one of those credit card commercials—whack! Whack! Whack!

The quickness masks that the speakers are mostly good. Not wretches like me.

Dan Warren lives in Scarborough. He can be reached at jonesandwarren@gmail.com.