The other day I was visiting my old friend Mike in Massachusetts. As we discussed the Celtics, the amount of crack in Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, and other weighty matters, Mike’s wife was washing their daughter’s hair in the tub—and that daughter was screaming her 5-year-old-head off.
Mike and I were confident enough in our masculinity to admit that we too were weepy, shampoo-phobic hippies as children. All that water, the shampoo in your eyes, your parents messing with your head literally for once…
“It’s like waterboading,” said Mike.
We got a good laugh out of that, and I got a good idea for this blog, since few words have spread as rapidly as waterboarding since 2004.
I’m a member of the American Dialect Society, the group that holds the oldest word of the year vote. Much as I love and cherish my fellow wordnuts, we have really blown it by never making waterboarding the WOTY. Our last several choices—subprime in 2007, plutoed in 2006, truthiness in 2005, and red/blue/purple state in 2004—weren’t a bad bunch. Hell, I’m still tickled to have been part of the meeting that helped launch truthiness into the mainstream. But none of these words has quite the currency of waterboarding.
Since Commander Cuckoo-Bananas vetoed a bill that would have banned waterboarding, the method will continue to semi-drown our sorta-enemies, while the word floods our blogs, newspapers, and Christmas cards. But even if America ever boldly steps into the twentieth century and decides torture is bad, waterboarding may be here to stay as a word because it is so useful in exaggerations and metaphors.
Except for Spock-like understaters, it’s common for writers and speakers to say they want to remove their eyeballs with a spork, set themselves on fire, boil their head, or hit themselves with a hammer rather than endure the pain of whatever is annoying them at the moment. Waterboarding has joined this group of pain-centric exaggerations. Here’s a few recent examples from blogs:
While good works fade into memory, our nation gravitates toward new greatness: I'm off to waterboard myself now.
Feb. 29, 2008
You make me want to waterboard myself.
Jan. 14, 2008
if i get anything below 8 i will kill myself. if i only get 8 i will waterboard myself. ...
Jan. 7, 2008
Today’s To-Do: Change Car Oil, Fix Door, Waterboard Myself
Dec. 22, 2007
I waterboard myself every morning to make sure I get a good brush on the pearlies.
Oct. 7, 2007
(By the way, if my inactivity has Wordapalooza’s hordes of acolytes concerned, nobody’s waterboarding me. I’m having an insanely busy month, and I’ll be able to pick up the blogging pace soon. Wordapalooza junkies strung out by the slow blogging pace should check out some pieces in The Boston Globe and Oxford University Press’ blog).
