Yuck!

As a grown woman with a perfectly good vocabulary (meaning, I've never said "sweaty" when I meant "sweetie"), I've discovered that sometimes I get lazy in my choice of words (certainly not quantity... read ahead if you don't believe me). I don't expect to to pepper every conversation or paragraph with five dollar words (and couldn't, even if I did expect it), I'm just saying: I thought I had standards.

I never, ever allow myself to use a double negative, for example. I can't say "ain't" (or even consider saying it) without hearing the voice of my eight year old self saying, "Ain't ain't a word!" I don't consider myself to be a wordsmith or even particularly smart (we will not be submitting SAT scores), I'm just saying that I like words. I like using them correctly. I get embarrassed if I say something wrong or stupid (hence my near-perpetual state of embarrassment, I guess). This has nothing to do with slang or curse words, either: when I discovered just how much it irritated my mother when I used the word "suck," you can only the imagine the things I had tolerated before that suddenly acquired suckitude: green beans, catechism, my mom's lousy taste in my clothing - those things all of a sudden had a name, and that name was Suck.

Lately, however, I've been replacing specific words with generic ones, and I'm not exactly sure why. My go-to generic words are slightly more interesting than "nice" and "okay" but they're still pretty vague, and plenty juvenile:

"funky," "icky," "yucky"

Sure, "funky" is a pretty adequate descriptor if you're discussing the mélange of scents wafting about the fitting rooms at Ross, or the purple jumpsuit and beaded scarf the bass player is wearing. And of course, if you're listening to the right music (James Brown, Tony Williams), what word other than "funky" would you use? But I've been known to use funky to describe a strange noise my car is making, my poor math skills, or a challenging rhythmic section in a flute choir piece. Take my word for it: none of these things could ever be described as funky.

"Icky" and "yucky" are interchangeable, it's true, and while there's no question when you declare something is icky/yucky, that you're not talking about something it would be safe to, say, put in your mouth, these are not words for a woman over the age of twelve. Since when did it become acceptable for me to call a dirty towel "icky"? Or to describe Patrick's green plaid fleece jacket as "yucky," even if he's wearing it with those awful, hundred year old brown jeans?

I hereby declare that I will make an effort to raise the level of my vocabulary.

But man: this cough and the accompanying phlegm I have all of a sudden? That shit is yucky.