Dirty Words

I've always had a feeling deep inside of me that words are very important. Words are some of my favorite things. They make me feel alive sometimes--like when Mr. Blake puts quotation marks around a phrase on the board that wouldn't necessarily need quotation marks, but seems more perfect with them.

My best friend recently began to date a boy that I set her up with. When I first spoke with him on the phone to arrange the date, I asked him how he was doing. "I'm very well," was his response. It was at that moment that he gained my approval to date my best friend. No joke--the "good" versus "well" usage made me approve of him.

A word can mean many different things. One of my favorite descriptive words is "dirty." It's a word with variable and flexible meanings. Kristina, Ben, and I enjoy exploring the plethora of meanings behind the word. We've come to clarify our meanings of it, even. We're going to make shirts with our corresponding favorite usage of the word. Mine is going to say "Dirty: Interesting." Kristina's is going to say "Dirty: No Good." Ben's is going to say "Dirty: Sinful." Fun, don't you think?

Recently, my usage of the word "dirty" got me into trouble. On a post a while back, I referred to missing talking with Leslie about hot dirty men. The inside joke to that is that Leslie finds hot dirty men attractive. One must understand Leslie's definition of hot and dirty, however. Leslie doesn't mean "obscenely handsome and perverted" when she says "hot dirty men." She actually means that she finds men attractive when they've been working outside and are a little sweaty and dusty. You know--doing some gardening, or working at Project Impact, or fixing their car. Harmless. My parents called me this morning, however, a tad upset at my apparent discussion of hot dirty men. But they took it to mean obscenely handsome and perverted, not sweaty and dusty. A world of difference.

Words matter. Choose them wisely. They might just change your life.