Funny Guy Friday… Confabs with comrades...

    Funny Guy Friday is written each week by my husband Mark.  So… I married a funny guy...
    I remember a time when I was asked by my boss at the State's Attorney's Office to wear a pager so I could help with charging and processing some folks that were planning to protest outside of an abortion clinic. Two thoughts went through my mind. First, one of my life's goals was to make it through my adulthood without ever having to wear a pager. I mean what a pain in the butt those things were. You had to stop what you were doing, get to a pay phone-----you remember those things don't you---- and call your girlfriend, boss, mother, father, whomever. Besides all that, why do people have to be in contact with everyone 24 hours a day. I was sure that that concept was never going to last.
    The second thought that went through my mind was that it was going to be awkward helping the police charge and process my brother. I was pretty sure that he was going to be on hand at the protest.  Fortunately, when I advised my boss that I may have a conflict, he recognized my conundrum and got some other poor soul to take the pager.
    But that seems like eons ago. My brother never got arrested and the 24 hour communication cycle is now a fact of life. Although pagers have gone the way of the Dodo Bird, everyone owns a cell phone. This, of course, means that everyone is only a click away from everyone else. Oh what sweet felicity.
     This brings me to my cell phone. As you all know, I am 4G worthy with an iPhone that does it all.  It has multifarious operations. It can make and receive phone calls, get emails and  text messages. I can get information off of the internet, check the weather, or go on facebook. I can take photos or make a video. It can do it all. Although I do think things are getting out of hand and that some people are a bit immoderate with their phones. Believe it or not, this morning, I got a text message asking me to call the person that sent me the text message.
     I texted back: I got an idea, call me instead of texting me and asking me to call you.
     Despite all of the great things that my phone can do, nothing beats the games. I believe the kids are calling them "apps" these days.
     Currently my favorite game is Words With Friends. WWF is just like Scrabble. You get seven tiles that coordinate with the letters of the alphabet. Each is assigned a point value and the board has spots for double and triple letters and words. At this moment, I have about 15 games going. I have games going with people that I know and some that I don't know. I have games going with Swtilah, Sheilapeela, MrMet, X-tile and a series of other friends and strangers. My strategy is pretty simple… put letters together that sound like a word, hit send and hope that the made up word evokes a "sending word" circle response. When this happens, I feel as though I just split the atom. When my opponents successfully implement this strategy, they are just getting lucky with made up words.
    Because my opponents seem to get lucky more often than I, I have considered invoking the Use it in a Sentence rule. If you can't use it in a sentence, you can't use it in the game.  Never mind that I can't use most of my made up words in a sentence.
    For example, the word QAT.  Who knows what that means? If you held a gun to my head and told me to use QAT in a sentence, the best I could come up with is the following:
     Qat hitting me in the head, it hurts. 
          Perhaps the biggest expansion in my vocabulary as a result of WWF comes with two letter words like TI, ZA, QI, EE, DI, ER, AY, EN, and NE. Not sure what they all mean, but who cares, if they bail me out of a jam.
     But it is not just two letter words that would creep into my daily use…..you know….if I ever…..you know…..took a second to look up their meanings. My personal favorite is TONEARMS. This resulted in 18 points for my opponent. Although, I did not look up this word, it did prompt me to try a similarly themed word---NICEBUTT. Unfortunately, NICEBUTT is not a word.
     And I hate it when I use a word that scores me a plethora of points and then my opponent uses that same word for his turn. It is unfair, and frankly, it borders on cheating. It is my made up word, not theirs. There is no way that they could possibly know what AERIEST means, and there is no way they could use it in a sentence. I can:
    It was easy to breath in the living room because it was the aeriest room in the house. 
    Cheryl thinks my time with WWF is just a bootless errand. She thinks my time in the morning would be better served if I were to get showered and get ready to go to work. Her response is vexing to me. Sometimes, she can be a pain in my facet joint. Frankly, I find her attitude a bit pestiferous. If she keeps it up, she may find herself in the quod. 
     Frankly, Cheryl's negativity is expected. She has never supported my well thought out plans for self improvement. For instance, when I attempted to increase my math skills using angles and vectors by playing Angry Birds and Bubble Burst, she poo pooed the idea.  When I attempted to memorize all the trails in Temple Run, she was dismissive.
     She has never understood my intellectual pursuits, and I find her behavior to be a bit churlish.
     As you can see, my vocabulary has blown up as a result of WWF. Coincidentally, this all comes at a time when the National Spelling Bee has been taking place in our Nation's Capital. I snickered when I heard how simple the final word---GUETAPENS---was. Seriously, could it get any easier? I immediately identified it as a French based word.
Here, I will use it in a sentence for you. Remember, it is a French based word…….
I am out of ze pencils, could you guetapens.  
     See, where would I be without WWF.