Word Extractor
©2025, George J. Irwin. All rights reserved.

I am not shy about stealing... oops, I mean "Honorably Adopting," words and phrases that I like. I’m also quick to give credit: "I didn’t make this up." But there’s one term that I think I can actually take credit for.

This reaches back to when I was trying just about anything to make a connection with the opposite sex, following a harsh second breakup with my third significant girlfriend. (Or was it a third breakup with my second girlfriend?) At the time, my strategy included personal ads in printed publications-- the idea that publications could be anything but printed was still some time in the future. This tactic got, let’s say, limited results, though I did receive a couple of not exactly above-board propositions. Fortunately, I wasn’t that desperate.

One of these results led to a brief phone call and then an agreed meeting at a Casual Dining Emporium about an hour from where I lived at the time. This was just about at the outer end of the range of how far I would be willing to travel to go on a date; any more of a drive and the prospective girlfriend would be what my father and his best male friend called "Geographically Undesirable." I’m sure that "G.U." designation was flexible depending on how attractive the woman in question was. I’m also sure that this would now be considered at least a Politically Incorrect Term, if not Downright Offensive. As it turned out, I wouldn’t follow it anyway, but that’s another story.

In a word, the date was awkward. I knew I liked to talk and I made a strong effort to avoid dominating the conversation. Ask questions, I told myself, and listen. Pay attention. Try to find common ground.

But even short queries from me were longer than the responses I received. I was advised to ask open-ended questions, but I got closed-ended answers back.

For example:

"How do you like your job?"

"It’s OK."

"What do you do?"

"Stuff."

"What kind of music do you like?"

"Different kinds."

By the time dinner arrived, which was only a few minutes after it was ordered but seemed like much more, I was pretty sure that there wasn’t going to be a second date. My challenge became just completing the first one. I guess I did alright, but there was a lot of silence in between bites of food.

On the drive home, I wondered what I did wrong. I figured that she didn’t find me attractive, or interesting, or whatever. Maybe she took one look at me and decided it was not worth putting any effort into a conversation. I didn’t consider until I was halfway home that perhaps she was reserved, or private, or not trusting. Maybe she, like me, was also feeling like she had to get out and date, or she was pushed into doing so. At any rate, I never did contact her again, and I can’t remember her name or what she looked like. I’m sure she remembers nothing about me either.

I recalled that there were precedents for this... and at least one president also. Calvin Coolidge was known as "Silent Cal." It’s been told more than once that the writer and wit Dorothy Parker told him that she took a bet that she could make him say more than five words at a dinner party. To which he replied, "You lose." I surmise that Parker was not Coolidge’s date, however (he was married). Perhaps Parker got the better of the verbal exchange, such as it was; it’s said that when she was told that Coolidge had passed away, she replied, "How can they tell?" (A similar rejoinder, "How do they know," is ascribed to less well known writer Wilson Minzer, who died three months after Coolidge.) Thinking about that example, I didn’t feel so bad, although my lack of exchange with my date was still rather painful in the moment.

In between all of the self-doubting thoughts, a single sentence jumped into my ruminations:

"Don’t make me get out the Word Extractor!"

I almost drove off the road.

Since that night, there have been numerous occasions when I have suppressed the desire to use that very sentence. Fortunately, neither my former wife or my current one is shy about expressing herself, and my friends also tend to be on the talkative side.

The concept of the Word Extractor has been much more applicable in my career. For example, when I was in the Process Improvement Business full-time, there were both in person and online meetings in which we needed to gather information, and no one was willing to provide said information. If we don’t tell you about the process, they collectively thought, then you can’t change it. So Silence was Golden. I was reminded of a fellow member of a process improvement team I was in, who made me burst out laughing when I first heard him say, "You can’t get blood out of a turnip."

And maybe I couldn’t get any words out of my date that night, either. If the Word Extractor was actually a thing, then maybe I could have obtained some answers, and maybe that would have been completely obnoxious... at best. Better that the date went the way that it did, and I got something I could laugh about, that I can say is all mine. Since, guess what, an online search for the term "word extractor" yields no results.

Well, maybe until now...

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