Why I am still uncool
There’s an old adage that goes, “If you can’t say it, you can’t do it.” Or maybe that’s just a line from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. At any rate, there’s a word that I’ve never been able to use as a verb and so I’ve never been able to do it properly. That word is “party”, as in, “Party like it’s 1999.” In college, I was once asked by someone I didn’t know, “So, do you like to party?” I laughed so hard at this improbable question that milk spewed out my nose. (I drank milk back then, I was that uncool.) Others who knew me also laughed, as if to say, “Who, him? He’s a party animal. Not.”
Using “party” as a verb means to revel or carouse, and back in college this typically involved drinking, drugs, and dancing. I’ll tell you which one of those activities was my favorite: none of them. “Partying” to me was synonymous with “having a rotten time with drunk stoned people who can’t dance”. Times have changed, thankfully, and so has “partying” (notice I keep putting that intransitive verb in quotation marks). I’ve made progress developing my “partying” skills, but it’s a struggle, and I still cannot use “party” as a verb. I think it’s really holding me back.
And then today I came across another word, a verb, that was used in such an earnest way that I again realized why I am still uncool and always will be. The word was “clubbing”, as in to go to a series of nightclubs and, presumably, “party” while there. The first thing that came to my mind when reading that word “clubbing” was a white baby seal being clubbed on the head by an evil hunter. So not cool.
I’ll never be one of the cool kids, but at this point I’m too old to care. To the kids out there who are reading this and who also have trouble using “party” and “clubbing” as verbs, I give you these simple words of encouragement, “Rock on! You are totally awesome!”
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