She's through. CBP at JFK let her through with no problems.

[DFW]

69. I wasn't the one who brought it up!

Don’t shoot the messenger. I just offered an explanation as to what it stood for.

Of course, some abbreviations will be second nature to those who use them with great frequency, which is why I know CBP, I have patience for those who use such abbreviations, just as I ask their patience to explain them if it’s an abbreviation I don’t know.

Europeans are obsessed with abbreviations, even in their news broadcasts. The Germans would refer to Brezhnyev as the “GS des ZK der KP der UdSSR.” It stood for General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and they expected the whole nation to know what they were talking about (and they did!). In the USA, accountants think you’re from another planet if you don’t know what a 1099 is. Until I actually needed to file one myself, I had no idea what they meant, either.

Even inside my own place of employment, when I asked if they could make a time-sensitive payment for me, for which I would send a check to cover it, they said sure, no problem, they would just 1175 it. Right, what in the world does that mean? How does one “1175” something? Well, to them, it meant they would pay some private charge an employee needed paid, and intended to repay the company ASAP. Ah, OK, got it. How the hell was I supposed to know that they had encoded such accounts payable as “1175?”

If you THINK everybody knows what your abbreviation means, have the good graces to explain it if someone doesn’t. But if someone uses an abbreviation that is so second nature to them, it doesn’t occur to them that someone doesn’t understand, don’t assume they are doing it to confuse you. It just might not have occurred to them that someone might have been confused.