Feb. 24, 1997
I once asked a Swedish friend of mine if his country was as obsessed with acronyms as the United
States
seemed to be.
"Not really," he said. "You people have invented all the ones we've ever used. They are so silly."
I had to agree with him. There was a time when the only acronyms that we tossed around were PTA, FBI, and AAA. Nowadays every business, every government program, and every overblown technical term is an indecipherable acronym. We can eat at TCBY and KFC, we can get heated up about NATO and NAFTA, and we can keep the non-computer world in a fog with HTML, A HREF, and URLs.
One witty friend and I have taken this obsession with acronyms and combined it with the American public's insatiable appetite for award ceremonies, creating a devilish little e-mail game designed to amuse us. It's not that we both don't have plenty of other things to do (he's supposed to be reading, researching, and writing, and I'm supposed to be teaching and doting on a family). It's just that we have succumbed to a shameless display of one-upsmanship.
It's not hard to play. All you need is an intellectual equal (or in my case, someone who's only 10 or 15 IQ points above me-- he's so smart), a great vocabulary (or very good dictionary), and a droll sense of humor. Oh........ You also need to have a person, place, or thing that annoys the hell out of you both. You turn the name of that person, place, or thing into a special award.
Of course, the award must somehow exemplify the annoying qualities of this person, place, or thing. If you think IHOP (admittedly already an acronym) is the epitome of inedible food, it would not be appropriate to refer to the "Intensely Healthy Oriface Pleasers" award, would it? However, the "Incredibly Hairy Opossum's Phlegm" award might work. Once you've created the award's name, you mail it to your partner who creates another award from those letters.
There are a few rules.
I nearly forfeited on this last rule. I think we had passed the e-mail back and forth 22 times when I suddenly had the absolutely PERFECT award flash in my brain. I frantically checked the previous entries, searching for any of my chosen words. None had been used!! Then I realized that it was not my turn. I had haphazardly sent back a no-brainer award to my friend simply to have the last word, and now I was suffering the agony of having to wait for him to return the e-mail without having used any of my precious words.
I wrote a nauseating plea to him, begging that he have compassion and return the list quickly. He basked in my agony knowing that he had me trapped. He made me suffer for 2 days (I can't repeat what I called him during that miserable time), and when he finally returned the list with his latest award, I had to admit it was good, BUT NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!! My words had not been used. I furiously typed the 24th award entry at the bottom of the list and triumphantly returned it. My efforts netted me the highest (actually the only) compliment my opponent has given me: "a most worthy entry." I'm so glad my little SNAFU didn't cost me the game. BTW, we're still playing and it's my turn. Anybody got a good word that starts with a "J"?
