Gawker put up this post about endangered words and the scary thing is that I frequently use most of the words people are worried about losing and/or saying should be brought back. Why, just the other day I remarked to a friend, “Zounds! I’m headed to a hootenanny where I shall squeeze my guts with a stick! Then I shall tweet about any terrific frippery I encounter after said gut squeezing.” Which begs the question: Am I that person out there in the linguistic forest chained to a big tree? Because no one cares about that person. I mean, you don’t want them to get chopped down because that’s gross, but in general it’s like, “you should have thought about that before chaining yourself to a tree.” It also begs the question, does anyone chain themselves to trees or is that just a plot device from Family Ties?
It also begs the question if my references are anachronistic in the extreme so pretend instead of Family Ties I’d said One Tree Hill.
The other day Anna and I were talking and I told her a story where I’d worried I’d come off as a creepy goober and she stopped me and said nothing I could have done would be worse than having used the word goober. “But I like goober!” I weedled asthmatically. It was attractive. She relented a bit, perhaps I am more in touch with slang zeitgeist was the thinking, however I’ve since embargoed goober.
Goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober, goober…
Oops, embargo repealed!
So, want to hear the story where I was worried I came off as a creepy goober? I think you do!
I had potential plans to hang out with someone I don’t know well however we’re both incredibly famous and exceedingly wonderful. He invited me to a thing and I couldn’t go to the thing so then maybe we were going to meet up the following day. He texted, “I’ll touch base with you tomorrow.” I quickly typed into my phone: “Not if I touch your base first.” And, here is the thing, I was sitting there staring at my own text thinking, “Don’t send this, it’s sending a message you aren’t intending to send.” And then I watched myself hit send, knowing this was quite possibly going to make things weird, because ultimately I was more in love with my dumb wordplay than anything else. Hence the question which I discussed with The 404, can girls be creepy?