For the past several years, I have been submitting ideas to the great Urban Dictionary….and I have received rejection after rejection. For those of you who don’t know, Urban Dictionary is the dictionary that we the people collectively write, submitting our common and not so common colloquialisms. A place where terms like
Farte Blanche: The power to fart freely. Have a chance to really shine.
Use it to brush up on your street lingo, find legitimate definitions for cool hipster terminology or horrify yourself with unimaginably disgusting sexual innuendo.
My submissions have primarily focused on trying to find a way to squeeze my name ED HOSE into the everyday vernacular. Not as easy as you may think, I am not sure what the guidelines are ….but trying to sell ED HOSE as another term for ” awesome beyond all measure” didn’t work. I was rejected in 2011. I tried again a few months later changing the definition of ED HOSE to mean “an adorable dysfunction” as in ” Did you see the baby giraffe ED HOSE it’s first few steps?” or ” Aww his prom date ED HOSED the back of her gown into her stockings” ….. Rejected….Further less inspired definitions tumbled out in desperation. The truth is ..I don’t think I know what I want my name to mean.
But I do know it is incredibly self obsessed to try and make ones own name a “term” But I got it in my head that it was the thing to do. I wanted to be in the Urban Dictionary and I would not give up!
Well Today my friends, after months, nay, years of thinking, plotting, and preparing, I am proud to announce I have achieved a part of my goal…Today one of my submissions made it in to The Urban Dictionary…No it was not my name…but still, it was my idea and that is close enough.
Today is the day my word “Twerky Sandwich” made it into Urban Dictionary. Definition : Being twerked upon by two people at the same time, as in …”The dance floor was jammin and Bobby found himself in the middle of a hot Twerky Sandwich”…ehhh?….ehh…I know, It’s not great….But today was a slow news day.
The only other thing of note that comes close to my accomplishment, is the achievement Diana Nyad. Never heard of her? No me either, until I stumbled across a tiny microscopic article while looking for recipes. She is the first woman to swim from Cuba to Key West without a shark cage…and she completed that 53 hour swim TODAY at the age of 64. AT THE AGE OF 64 !!!! She swam in shark infested, jelly fish riddled open ocean waters. She swam 112 miles. But the most impressive thing…This was her 5th attempt. She has been trying to make this journey for 35 years. ( because I was rejected so many times from Urban Dictionary, I know the strength it takes to try again )
( please lord let the sarcasm come across in my parenthesis and let no one think I am actually douchey enough to compare myself to this amazing pillar of incredibleness )
Upon hitting the shores today, after swimming for 53 hours, lips too swollen from sun and saltwater to speak clearly, she uttered these words
“I have three messages. One is, we should never, ever give up. Two is,
you’re never too old to chase your dream. Three is, it looks like a
solitary sport, but it is a team,”
I don’t know what you were doing this Labor Day weekend, as for me, I never feared creatures of the deep would entangle me in stinging tentacles as I pursued my dream. I never really got off my chair. It never even occurred to me to push the boundaries of human ability.
If there is a finer example of bravery, a more concrete showing of pure will…I am unaware of it. She swam in the dark, in the ocean, like the middle of it, not just on the edges like the rest of us. This is a woman who believed in herself, had a vision and fought thru all pain and circumstance to achieve it.
I have drawn the conclusion , if anyone deserves their name in the dictionary, it is HER. Today I submitted the term Nyadtional Treasure to the Urban Dictionary….hopefully they see that she is one.
