Once again, a totally misused term (or word) that I am guilty as charged in using. That term would be GAY.
As many of you know, in the 20th century that term was associated with people that are homosexual. It’s not a bad term, but before the term was used as such, it also meant to be “merry, happy, bright or showy“. In fact if you look it up, the term that is more commonly associated with a homosexual person, comes in dead last in the order of what the word actually is defined as!
How did I misuse this term? Well we are heading to this engagement party this evening for a couple we know, and I was laying down taking a nap, when my fiance came in and announced that the time and told me that people were dressing up. My immediate thought, as well as vocal reply was, “How fu**ing GAY!” Of course she sided with me on this fact, and said, “Oh just wear what you wore to my companies Christmas party.”
Yes, it’s true, I really don’t like to dress up for anything. It’s like the thought creeps into my head, “Why?!?” I think my aversion to it comes from the fact that when I use to work in the cubicle fields of America, one of the better gigs I had as Unix programmer was at this financial company. One of the big ones as a matter of fact. Yes, we had to wear shirt and tie and dress pants every day to sit in a cubicle to write code. Not only that, some of the older people that worked there said they had just changed the dress code policy recently as they use to make you wear a suit to work every day. Of course, what was the benefit of that? Nothing. Oh, yeah, they would have casual Friday’s. You know, the day of the week where you could wear a polo shirt and jeans. Another totally useless dress code policy that corporate America thinks it is doing a favor if you will for it’s ant farm of cubicle employees.
My immediate thought then as it is now is, “How fu**ing GAY can corporate America be?!” Now of course, there I go again – that isn’t the proper term to use. Just like the term which started me on this term-in-nation cause I’m on these days on such terms as “rockstar” and “widget“, it’s just not the correct term to be using. The funny thing is – it’s so accepted. Even friends I have that are homosexual seem to use the term gay to describe something as gay as having to sit in a cubicle all day wearing a shirt and tie. Dressed up with no place to go just because of some stupid corporate policy.
I guess what I hope for is someone out there to come up with a new term that means the same as stating the obvious. I would suggest a term such as “Samurai Warrior” like I did to try to replace “rockstar”, but I can’t think of one! There has to be such a word or term or even phrase that will overtake the misuse of the word “GAY” to mean the same thing. Such a word needs to express the facts of how “gay” something is, but still not be a term or word or phrase associated with something else that is the actual meaning.
Technically Speaking, this will be the first event I actually attend amongst a group of people that are smokers and non-smokers. For the first time, I’m in the non-smoker group! Now that isn’t gay at all, in fact I find it actually cool.
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