Words that have never been uttered before
Sunday, September 4th, 2011
I was about nine years old when I started doing it, how about you? There’s no shame in it, you know. Everybody’s done it.
I’m talking about those words that have never been uttered before, not that disgusting thing you’re thinking of.
You know how it goes. Weird circumstances conspire to put you in a position to say something like “I have a mustard stain on my tongue depressor.” And the moment it’s out of your mouth, you and everybody else in the room says “I’ll bet that’s never been said before!” And you all have a great laugh and spend the afternoon stringing words together that have – you know the drill – never been uttered before.
Loser.
No, not really. Because we all do it. And we’re all pretty damn sure, when we babble something like “peanut butter pogo stick,” that we are the only people, in the history of the human race, to have babbled it. There’s a childish brand of pride that comes with being the first, too. Which is great, if your nine or ten years old.
Which you’re not, I’m pretty sure.
Back in the day, you could claim almost any phrase as a first. “Monkey diamond spunk stick,” you would declare, and who in the world could prove that those words had come together before? Nobody, that’s who. But now there’s Google. If you type “monkey diamond spunk stick” into the search field, you just might be surprised to find not just one but several…
No, I guess not. This really is a first, at least as far as Google knows and, let’s face it. Google knows everything. Which is my point, I guess. Technology has put the onus of proof onto he who declares a unique phrase. If you’re going to assert that “pee pee hole bummer” has never been said before, you better run it through a search engine first.
I’ll wait while you do that.
