The Oxford Dictionary has announced its word of the year – the word that has attracted the most attention. And the winner is (drum roll please). Vape. Huh? It's the act of inhaling or exhaling the vapors of an electronic cigarette. I have to admit I've never heard of vape. However, I do know that inhaling and exhaling is very important – it's something I try to do every day.
The runner-up words were also baffling to me. They were:
- Bae: This is a term of endearment for one's romantic partner. My wife has called me many things (several unprintable) but bae was never one of them.
- Budtender: A person who serves customers at a cannabis shop. Hmmm, this is someone who distributes marijuana – in the ‘60s I called this person Sam (who was my college roommate).
- Normcore: This is a trend where unfashionable clothing is worn as a deliberate fashion statement. This is great news. I can now call my loud red plaid shirt and white pants a normcore.
- Contactless: Involving technologies that allow a smart card, mobile phone, etc. to contact wirelessly to an electronic reader. I made a phone call (using my land line) to my daughter so she could explain to me what the heck this means.
- Slactivism: Apparently it's an action performed on the internet in support of a political or social cause and that action requires little effort. I've never heard of this word either but I do like the "little effort" part.
Obviously these words are not in the realm of my experience and I'm willing to bet they're not in most of yours. Does that mean we're no longer part of the mainstream of society? That's depressing. Maybe the only way to make ourselves feel better is to see our local budtender. No, that's not the solution (although it might be fun).
I decided it's not us, it's society. And maybe we've been ignored and passed over but it's time to fight back. So I decided to come up with some new words that we seniors could identify with. These will be our words and with any luck they will be in next year's edition of the Oxford Dictionary. And they are (drumroll please):
- Bolderolders: These are older people who are stronger and tougher than they look. You usually see a bolderolder on the 6:00 news beating up a potential mugger.
- Plouders: People who feel they have to talk loudly or yell when speaking to seniors because we are all hard of hearing. Plouders usually have low IQs and should be treated gently.
- Treaming: This is dreaming that is so vivid that you actually believe you have been transported back in time. For example, "When I tream that I am 16, I expect to break out in pimples."
- The Splendas: These seniors live on a fixed income and don't want to ask their kids for money. They skip lunch, shop at the 99 Cent Store, have basic cable, love discounts, and on the rare occasion that they do go to a restaurant they take home several packets of Splenda.
- Hawkinsians: These are really smart older people like Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, Warren Buffet, Ruth Ginsburg and George Bush (I'm being kind).
- Polloctify: Strange things are happening to our bodies as we get older. There're liver spots, warts, moles, wrinkles, scaliness, and skin tags. Instead of thinking this is horrible, let's celebrate the different colors and contours of our skin and consider it a work of art like a Jackson Pollock painting. We'll proudly say, "Our body is Polloctfiying."
Sy has written for The Bob Newhart Show, Taxi, MASH, Maude, The Wonder Years, and Frasier. He has been married for forty-one years which is great because they say the first forty are the toughest.