I have seen a movie and at least one TV show, I think it was "Ghost Whisperer", where a store, when business hours were over, had a sign that said "We're shut" or "Shut" instead of "We're closed" or "closed". I can find no official announcement of the change, but I know that it is coming. The big unnecessary corruption of a perfectly good phrase.
I have seen it enough now that it is concerning me. Well, not concern actually, but why are they messing with this? Why is "shut" better than "closed". In fact, "shut" has a kind of permanent feel, where "closed" has a feeling of the possibility of opening again, which in fact, it does. Whatever it is. A coffee shop. A clothes store. A Kinko's. I want to feel that it isn't like, a slap in the face, and "shut" feels like a slap in the face. Not that the day has ended and we are going home to have dinner, and to sleep, but we don't want you there, we are SHUT. GO AWAY!
Has anybody else noticed this or is it a symptom that I have spent far too much time at the same job, in the same apartment, in the same state (not New York and definitely not the Bronx. Please tell me that the stores aren't telling Bronxites that they are "shut". The Bronx shut? Tell me it ain't so!)?
Somebody out there said to himself, or herself, (I hope it wasn't a woman) that we needed a new way to say that our favorite hang outs weren't open anymore. Why? Surely there was something more meaningful to do? Like prevent people from eating their favorite unhealthy burgers. Or telling people they can't smoke in their own homes. Shades of double think and double speak! I don't want us to change the basic, the "We're closed". No one asked me. Did "they" ask you?
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