Take care of
Today’s English expression is “take care of.” You might be familiar with this expression in its most common meaning, which is to be a protector or a provider for someone. You could say, “I’m taking care of my friend’s dog while she’s away on vacation.” You might also say, “I need some help taking care of an elderly relative.” That’s the traditional way of using this phrase, to be a protector or provider for someone.
However, the way I used it today was different. I said that Tesla’s self-driving mode—supposedly—takes care of the speed control and the steering. In this sense, “take care of” simply means “to do something that’s necessary.” And we often use this phrase when two people must work together for a common goal.
We talked about the three different self-driving modes. In the adaptive cruise control, the car takes care of increasing or decreasing the speed according to the flow of traffic, but the driver has to take care of the rest, like steering and stopping for red lights.
In the autopilot mode, the car takes care of steering, stopping, and starting, but only on a single road; the driver has to make turns. And, according to Tesla, in full self-driving mode, the car takes care of everything. The car does everything necessary. You heard that I didn’t exactly believe that claim, but that is what they told me. The car takes care of everything: the car does everything that’s necessary.
Let’s think of some other examples. This is a great phrase to use when you’re offering to do something necessary. Let’s say you finished a big family meal. Now there’s the lull in the conversation when everyone realizes it’s time to stand up and do the dishes. You might offer, “Let me take care of the dishes tonight.” If you say that, you’re offering to do the dishes. You’re offering to do something that’s necessary.
If you’re planning a meal, you might tell someone, “I’ll take care of the cooking if you take care of the grocery shopping.” That means you’re offering to do the cooking if your friend does the grocery shopping.
You can use this phrase in the past tense. Imagine you’re at work and you’re doing a project that requires you to do some research and write a report. Your colleague might say, “I’ll get started on the research now.” But wait—you already did the research. Here’s what you can say: “I took care of that already.” That’s one way of saying, “I did that already.” You can say, “I took care of the research; my notes are all right here.”
Quote of the Week
Here’s a funny quote for you. It’s by a teacher, Shunryu Suzuki. According to his Wikipedia biography, he helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States. But this is what he said to his students one day, “Each of you is perfect just as you are—and you could all use improvement.”
I like that way of looking at things. You’re perfect as you are, but you can still improve. It’s a way of acknowledging that you can always get better, but that doesn’t take away from your inherent self-worth.
See you next time!
And that’s all for today, January 24, 2022. I had fun behind the wheel of a Tesla; I have to say. This was an eye-opening experience. I’ve always loved driving, and I like shifting my own gears. I like the way a regular car feels. I thought driving an electric car would be boring, but I was wrong. I rather liked it. By the way, if you can find a Tesla showroom, you can test drive a Tesla just like I did. You don’t even have to pretend you’re going to buy one. I just said I wanted to see what it was like, and they said, “hop in.” So try it out if you want to.
I’ve mentioned before that one thing we do in Plain English Plus+ is, we have live video calls. We do them on Zoom at a variety of times so that everyone can participate in at least one or two in a month. So I think this will be a fun topic for a future Zoom call. We can walk through online images of a Tesla, talk about what’s there, debate the pros and cons, things like that. I think that’ll be a good topic, maybe for one of our Saturday calls in the future. So, if you’re a Plus+ member, watch out for that on your dashboard.
If you’re not a Plus+ member, you can always become one by visiting us at PlainEnglish.com/Plus . That’s where you’ll find all the details about the membership, and you can sign up in less than five minutes.
That’s all for today; we’ll be back with another lesson on Thursday.
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