By Kollengode S Venkataraman Written in January 1997.
You may think that only computer nerds, bureaucrats, and those in uniform, like military personnel, health care professionals, and dark blue suited Wall Street types, assault us with acronyms. Think again. Our daily life is so full of acronyms that one way to identify a new kid on the block is to see how facile he or she is with local acronyms. Are you a new kid? Are you an old kid just out of touch?
Take a typical day in our life. In my own case. NPR, relayed from WDUS wakes me up at 6:00 am and updates me on NASA, EEC, NATO, CIA, ASEAN, and others. Before I leave for work, I scan the PG while drinking my OJ and listening to the other OJ’s legal travails. Often for Comic Relief, I dial in KDKA at 1020 AM. In the afternoon to listen to EIB Networks, Rush Limbaugh. In the evening. CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS dump disjointed news bits in my home. Because I still resist cable TV, I’m saved of additional auditory enema from CNN, CNBC, and CSPAN. Most men are addicted to NBA, NFL, and NCAA, much to their wives’ annoyance. If they are married long enough, some of these women are also relieved.
Many of us dealt with INS to straighten out our green cards for which FBI ran verification on us. In our daily life, we have to remember our SSNs and show our PDL every time we pay in cheques. We watch DJIA and S&P 500 in the news, and some of us compare the PE ratios, ROIs, ROAs, and other measures of MNCs. I wonder why some Smart Alec MBA did not coin DOI (drain on income), and DOA (drain on assets) to describe the performance of companies bleeding red ink and still being actively traded by NYSE and NASDAQ. Every year, of course, I cough up money to IRS that leaves very little for me to put into my IRA.
When you go to lunch, my colleagues order BLT with fries. When I order my CLT, the waiter’s reaction is as if I have landed from Mars. Annoyingly, I tell them CLT is cheese, lettuce, tomato.
As a Teetotaler, I don’t worry about DUI. But still, I don’t drive during holidays worrying about other SOB DUIs on the road. After wondering for a long time, I learned that BYOB in the menu card in small food joints means Buy Your Own Beer. As we reach middle age, we have to keep track of our BP, LDL and HDL and other ratios. I take vitamin pills every day in quantities of 2 or 3 multiples of RDA. In suburban USA, habitually inebriated adults join AA while kids run wild with BB guns vandalizing traffic signs. Next batter drive. When I started working, I thought I said goodbye to GPS because in corporate America nobody gives a damn about G your GPA once you are in. All they talk about is PGA scores. But GPA bug bit me again now in my daughter’s grade sheets. “If you want to go to any good school,” I warned her much to her annoyance, “you better get good QPA’s, GPAs, and PSAT is an SAT scores.”
Recently, my friends rode in a PAT bus to Oakland to go to a concert at CMU organized by SPIC-MACAY. Take a deep breath. This one stands for the mouthful of Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Among Youth. There, Carnatic music aficionados aggravate me by using RTP in their conversation for Ragam Thanam Pallavi. An elaborate and difficult piece in concerts. Which when done right, is listeners’ delight What next? JS for Jatiswaram and SJ for Swarajati?
As we advance in our chronometer, sometimes in the not distant future, I’m sure we will receive glossy flyers from AARP on why we should join the organization. They will ask us to cough up money to lobby the white elephants in the GOP and the jackasses in the DNC.
For now, struggling to stay employed and raise a family, I am wondering how I’m going to foot the bill for my daughter’s education, and why we do not have an AAWP. That is, American Association of Working People, fighting for the plight of all workers, men and women, union and nonunion. ∎
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ChatGPT analysis:
This is an enjoyable period piece that captures a particular moment in American life during the mid-1990s. Much of the humor comes from the relentless accumulation of acronyms, with the narrator pretending to be overwhelmed by an alphabet soup that invades every aspect of daily life. Even though some references are now dated, the central joke remains recognizable—if anything, the situation has become even more extreme with internet and social media abbreviations.
Some strengths of the essay:
- Strong organizing device. The narrative follows the course of an ordinary day—from waking up with NPR to work, lunch, finances, family life, hobbies, and retirement planning. This gives coherence to what could otherwise have been just a list of acronyms.
- Escalating humor. The accumulation itself is funny. By the time the reader reaches strings such as “BP, LDL, HDL… RDA… AA… BB guns… GPA… QPA… PSAT… SAT,” the absurdity becomes the joke.
- Invented acronyms. DOI (“Drain on Income”) and DOA (“Drain on Assets”) are clever inventions. Likewise, CLT (Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato) humorously parodies the familiar BLT.
- Cultural observations. The essay gently pokes fun at American bureaucracy, finance, sports, healthcare, and immigrant life without becoming mean-spirited.
- Ending with substance. After all the lighthearted wordplay, the conclusion shifts briefly to a serious concern—the economic pressures on ordinary working families. The proposed “AAWP—American Association of Working People” provides a thoughtful ending instead of merely stopping after another joke.
A few aspects naturally show their age:
- References such as O.J. Simpson’s trial, green-card processing by INS (now USCIS), EEC (now the EU), Wall Street jargon of the 1990s, and PAT buses evoke a specific era. Rather than being drawbacks, they give the essay historical flavor.
- Some acronyms that were widely understood in 1997 are less familiar today, while today’s readers would expect others like URL, Wi-Fi, GPS (now universally recognized), AI, QR, SMS, USB, PDF, FAQ, VPN, NFT, and so on.
The humor is also distinctly immigrant in perspective. The narrator is simultaneously an insider and an outsider—comfortable enough in America to laugh at its habits, yet still bemused by some of its linguistic conventions. The CLT episode is particularly effective because every immigrant has experienced confidently asking for something perfectly logical, only to discover that local convention dictates otherwise.
Stylistically, the piece could be tightened slightly by shortening a few of the longer lists. Occasionally the parade of acronyms threatens to become a catalogue rather than a narrative. But because the essay is itself satirizing excess, the abundance largely works in its favor.
One striking aspect is how prophetic the essay now seems. In 1997, the author thought acronyms were everywhere. Today, our vocabulary is even more saturated:
- AI, LLM, GPT
- URL, HTML, HTTP, HTTPS
- USB, HDMI, SSD
- SMS, MMS, DM
- VPN, MFA, OTP
- EV, ICE, EPA
- COVID, PCR, PPE
- ESG, ETF, IPO
In retrospect, the essay almost understates the explosion of acronym-driven communication that accompanied the internet and smartphones.
Overall, this is an engaging humorous essay with a clear narrative thread, observational wit, and a gentle satirical touch. It works both as comedy and as a time capsule of educated middle-class American life in the late 1990s, especially from the perspective of an Indian immigrant navigating a culture where almost every institution seems determined to compress itself into three or four capital letters. The closing appeal for an “American Association of Working People” also reminds the reader that beneath the alphabet soup lies a genuine concern about the economic security of ordinary families—a fitting conclusion that gives the humor an understated social dimension. ∎