America’s Low "Self of Steam"

Several months ago, my 16-year-old son claimed his poor performance at school was a result of his low “self of steam”. Unsure if we had heard him correctly, my wife and I asked him to repeat his statement. Again, he blamed his poor performance on his low “self of steam”. Our loud outburst of uncontrolled laughter was completely unintentional.

After all, we would never want to damage his already suffering “self of steam” as it were.

Like most kids his age, he did not bear well to our unconcealed contempt of his limited vocabulary. To add insult to injury, he was unsure why we were laughing. He thought perhaps, it was his explanation itself. Seeing his obvious distress, we hastily apologized and explained that the correct term was “self esteem”. Red faced, he muttered a few muffled slurs and stormed off to his room.

Perhaps we were slightly cruel in our method of correction, but once the humiliation faded, even he would lightheartedly use the term “self of steam” as an inside joke from time to time.

Lesson learned, vocabulary improved by a fraction of a point.

Three weeks ago, while watching television, our regional cable company aired a public service announcement aimed at our local youth.

They were promoting behaviors that would impact teenager’s “self of steam” in a positive fashion. They used the term several times in 60 seconds.

Though, both my wife and I had heard the announcement clearly, our disbelief that a state funded commercial, created by professionals, had made it past whatever quality checks that certainly must be in place. Moreover, the spot airs two or three times an hour, during prime time, every day of the week. It is still running.

I found myself embarrassed for them.

After the third time we suffered through the spot that first night, for reasons unknown, I decided to Google the term “self of steam”. Perhaps I was curious if this was a common mistake. Apparently it is. I was greeted by a barrage of self-help websites, blogs and forums; all discussing various aspects of the current level of “self of steam” experienced by Americans these days.

I tried Bing and received virtually the same results. Probing further, I visited several sites. One site in particular caught my attention, mainly because the title header described the site as being authored by a ”20+-year veteran of the English classroom”.  Entering the site, I saw the term repeated numerous times, highlighted in bold, sandwiched in between all sorts of positive self-descriptive statements like “my strength as an educator” and “my commitment to excellence”. The author clearly didn’t have any problem with her own “self of steam”, but the tone changed when speaking of those poor unfortunate novice educators who didn’t muster up to her exceedingly high standards.