It has happened to me more often than I can count.

That is, my rousing in some others an instant, instantly-intense dislike. Started when I was a kid. I didn’t know why.

I was in my twenties before someone shared with me one possible reason: seems people thought I was “pretentious,” “a poser,” “intellectually arrogant,” “thought I was better than them.”

He said that judgement stemmed at least in part from a smack-inviting way of speaking. One time a co-worker wanted to deck me for my vocabulary. I only learned about the future beat down — never happened — and why, much later.

A woman, still a member of the Christian acting company to which I once belonged, one day brought an argument we had to a swift end by channeling the ghost of a “Little House on the Prairie” biddy: “Your perfect grammar will not save you. Good day, sir!” Yes, she actually said that.

Like others, I have shortcomings. Attention deficit disorder has gifted me with an almost criminally forgetful mind. People have thought me “dishonest” because I have a tough time looking others in the eyes when we talk. My wife, Ann, suspects I may be on the autism spectrum. Could be.

But let me set the record straight at least on this “way of talking” thing. It has nothing to do with any wish to elevate myself above anyone else. I learned to speak the way my parents spoke at home when we were growing up. My brothers and sisters tell me they have also been called to account for using “big words.”

My dad had a large vocabulary. And his love of poetry sank into me early, without my knowing it. He used to recite from the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, and for 25 years we attended the performances of the Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society. He loved The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the works of Shakespeare, Dante, “and all those other high-faluting Greeks.”

I was a kid when for the first time, I heard him recite the following lines:

“Come into the garden, Maude,

For the black-bat night has flown…”

Maybe that’s what hooked me.

But here’s what I have learned over the years. The fewer “big words” I use, the greater the likelihood I will not provoke in others a desire to kick me down the stairs or grab hold and chuck me from a high window.

The novelist William Faulkner once criticized Ernest Hemingway for using “nickel words” where larger words would have worked better. Hemingway’s response: “He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”

I’ve never forgotten that. With everything I write today, I am trying to cut the words to a bare minimum. It doesn’t always work.

But it all makes me wonder: why must we attack other people for being who they are, for being different, in their own, perhaps quirky, ways? I prefer variety.

What do you think?

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Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@auburn-reporter.com.