Hey. Hey pal. Yeah — you. The guy with the suffix. What’s your name, pal? Septuagenarian? Jesus — that’s a mouthful, huh? What is that? Some kind of Greek or something? That’s cool — I got no problem with the Greeks. They tend to get a little loosey-goosey with their present progressives, but you know what? I like that. Anyway, buddy, I’m gonna need you to go ahead and move some of this definition, alright? Yeah, I’m moving in, and I gotta be honest… I really don’t do too well in cramped spaces.
Jesus. Sorry. Where are my manners? I never even introduced myself. Here, let me shake your schwa. I’m the word “Sexcapade,” and I just got added to this Microsoft Office Spell-Check Dictionary.
Yeah, it’s a crazy story. One minute there I was, hanging around in Outlook with my buddy “Alot,” squiggly red lines dangling off both our asses, and BOOM! Here I am. Right-clicked up to the big leagues. I gotta say — first impression? I like it. Clean, well-organized — and just look at all of these Latin roots! I gotta be honest, pal — there’s nothing I like more than a nice, round, Latin root. Are you a root man? Or are you more of a tense guy? Either way – a descriptor could really get used to this, am I right?
Full disclosure, pal? I was a little bit nervous about coming up here. My lifestyle doesn’t exactly lend itself well to “conventional usage standards,” and I didn’t know how I was going to handle the whole “the prepositions know their place” vibe that you guys have going on up here. But now that I’m added? I love it. It’s classy. It’s the kind of place that makes a guy want to get himself an etymology, you know? Maybe even start saving up for a plural form. Take a step up in the world.
Speaking of which — can I run something by you? What do you think about this as an example sentence: “Shari spent all of Tuesday morning disinfecting the hot tub in anticipation of a late afternoon sexcapade.” Pretty good, right? And you know the best part about that sentence? It’s a true story. Yeah — Shari was this proper noun I used to date. But there was absolutely nothing proper about her, if you know what I’m saying. Let me put it this way, pal… Shari wasn’t an “Add To Dictionary” kinda girl. She was more of an “Ignore Once And Continue With Document” kinda girl, if you catch my drift.
And on that note, Sept… sorry, do you mind if I call you by your prefix? Can I ask you a question — noun to noun? It’s been a long day, I don’t really know anybody else in the area, and I was just wondering… if a guy were looking to get his participle dangled up here, where would he look, exactly? I mean, if I were a verb, where would I go to get some no-questions-asked conjugation? I checked out the X-Y-Z district; you used to hear all kinds of stories about that place, back when it was all just umlauts and transitives walking around. Now that seemed like the kind of place where a guy could really get his sentence deconstructed. But I took a walk over there this morning, and I gotta tell you buddy — that neighborhood has changed. Now it’s just a bunch of artisanal yogurt shops, hipsters playing zithers, and language families pushing around their lower case letters. Gentrification – it’s more than just a derivation of the French root genterie.
You know what, Sept? Maybe me getting added up here is a sign that it’s finally time for me to slow down a little bit. I’ve already lived a life that most parts of speech could only dream of. Not to tell tales out of school, pal — but let’s just say that I’ve had my direct object inside of so many predicates that I’m lucky to be alive. But at some point you just start to wonder if there’s something more out there, you know? Maybe it’s time for me to settle down, find a nice synonym, form a compound word…
… Oh shit — Shari, is that you!? Whose clause did you modify to get up here, huh!? Hey Sept, nice meeting you pal, but I gotta run. I’ve got a semi-colon going right now, and I’m not gonna waste it…