Our grandson-in-law made a nice table for our spare bedroom. That's where I work when Lynn sleeps late. I take a mug of coffee in there and I need something to set it on to avoid hurting the tabletop. I grab a paperback book from the children's collection nearby and use that as a coaster. The same book has served several times. One day, I took a look: what is this book?
Turns out it is "Never Mind" by Avi and Rachel Vail. It is a teen's book but we both got interested in it. Lynn read a good bit of it. Then, I picked it up. After I read a little, I suggested I read it aloud. Between tv after dinner and tv a bit later, I read aloud while she assembles jigsaw puzzles. We like to alternate between fiction and non-fiction. We just finished "The Spy and the Traitor" by MacIntyre, one of Lynn's book club's choices so this fits right in.
The story is about a boy and girl 7th graders who are twins. They like to emphasize that despite being twins, they are very different. She is neat and does her homework perfectly. He isn't and doesn't. We haven't gotten too far into the story so I can't say much about what happens.
I can say that "never mind" has often gotten my attention. To me, the phrase literally says "don't ever think" or "pay no attention ever" or "never obey" or "never object". When we came across a hobo in downtown Baltimore, my mother said "pay no attention" and I didn't. She might have said, "Never mind him." It's odd, since people are often telling one another to mind, to attend, to pay attention. The teen use of "never mind", as in "let's dismiss this topic and not discuss it" would have been a red-ish flag in my family. I could have said "I don't want to talk about it" or "I don't know" but had I said "never mind what I am up to", it would have spurred deeper interrogation, not lessened questioning.
In the book, the phrase seems close to teen use of "whatever". In the movies I have seen, a teen, usually a girl, says "Whatever" with a roll of the eyes, which together seem to convey a message that "I don't like your position on this matter but I don't want to discuss it in any great depth so I will just go along."
