Word Addict

When someone says they're so hungry they could eat a horse, is it the mass of the horse that they're referring to, or the fact that we don't typically eat companion animals? Like, are we talking a large volume of food amount of hungry or a violating societal norms amount of hungry? For comparison, if I said I was so hungry I could eat a therapy dog, would that convey less, more, or the same amount of hungriness as if I said I could eat a horse? Or if I went to a horse-eating sort of country and said I could eat a horse would they be like, Yeah - so?

In light of this confusion I've been trying to say more accurate things like, "I'm so hungry I could take a stab at this sad apple that's been living in my field vest for the past week," or, "I could really purchase a footlong sub then only finish half of it because I consistently overestimate how much food I can consume in one sitting."

The whole accurate communication business came about because I keep seeing people posting things online about these four (or sometimes five?) "Agreements", which I'm mostly cool with but the first one is about always being impeccable with my words and I am definitely sloppy as fuck with my words. Or as I prefer to think of it, I expend oodles of energy being precise and thorough with my words at my job, so I really like to let loose with my words in my free time.

I've been encountering some issues during my efforts to rein my words in to something closer to "impeccable". First off, it's obvious that I'm not just a casual or social user of non-impeccable words; I'm a full-blown addict. It feels indescribably dull to convey things without verbally BeDazzling them: having "several ripe tomatoes" in my garden is simply not as punchy as having a metric fuck-ton of them. Saying I'm "somewhat over capacity" at work lacks the exhilarating dramatic flair of being adrift in a choppy sea of needy projects. And honestly, if I'm so hungry I could eat a normal quantity of a socially-acceptable food item, why would I even bother mentioning it?

Ugh, I can barely get it up to say anything at all without at least a little hit of non-impeccableness.

Secondly, I guess after all this time as a non-impeccable-word-addict maybe I've gotten bad at regular words? Without the usual suite of weather-related topics to discuss during routine interactions with strangers (trouble being that I obviously can believe the smoke/heat/humidity/whatever because it's fricking August and BC is on fire, duh, so it doesn't seem very impeccable to claim that I can't), I'm out of tricks. I panicked a little at my blood draw appointment on Saturday and asked the phlebotomist whether she prefers her orange juice with pulp or without.

Which brings me to my third problem: weather is the ultimate neutral topic in Canada. Without fallbacks like how you just can't buhleeeve this weather we're having, you get risk entering uncomfortably intimate territory like orange juice or the pharmacist's nice eyebrows, where everything somehow sounds like a pickup line despite your most impeccable of intentions.

So I'm going to make you all a deal: you stop posting this "Agreements" bullshit and making me accidentally hit on my pharmacist, and I will carry on in my usual highly entertaining (to me) manner, with the mutual understanding that I'm employing a (to me) standard degree of artistic license in the telling.