My husband and I were sitting in the living room, he talking to Tarek and Christina on Flip or Flop about his issues with that glass tile backsplash and I on my laptop trying to write something. I was frustrated that I couldn't think of a word and I couldn't look it up, because what I knew about it was flimsy if not completely wrong. I wasn't even 100 percent sure there was a word for this thing. But that didn't stop me from driving everyone crazy with my obsession to find it, learn how to spell it, and use it like a boss.
"What's the word I'm looking for," I asked my husband.
"Oh boy, here we go," he muttered.
"It's like placate but in a more aggressive sense. Like someone in authority who keeps the masses under his thumb by drugging them, either literally with real drugs or figuratively, by just being a jerk. And there's a Q in it."
My husband just sat there, unresponsive. It's almost like he wasn't even trying to help me.
"It's like what The Man does to youth to stay in control and keep everyone thinking the status quo is just fine and no one should start a revolution. And if it's not a Q, it's a letter in the same family, like W or B."
"How am I supposed to know? I am The Man," my husband said. (It's true. He is kind of The Man now and we're both a little upset about it.)
"But this Man is really powerful and kind of a tyrant. He's wearing a suit and he's giving pills to a guy with an afro and a tie-dyed shirt on," I said, trying to get my husband interested enough in these characters I was making up on the spot to help me figure it out. "And afro guy is like, no, no, but then he starts to be lulled into submission, like a sheep." I was really getting into it now.
"What on earth are you writing?" my husband asked me.
"A guest blog for a moving company site," I said. "And then The Man is just all cool and stony with his hypodermic needle -"
"Stop. Just . . . stop trying to think of stuff."
He is sick to death of me and my words.
I had to go to the next step, which meant calling in the big dog: My sister Pam.
Pam is a strutting encyclopedia of show tunes, TV theme song lyrics, presidential inaugural speech quotes, hippie sayings from posters in the 1960s, and other trivia you can't find anywhere else. The greatest thing about the Pam resource is that you can give her the tiniest morsel of a clue and she'll almost always know the answer. The English language is not always required. One time when we lived in New Jersey, my husband called me from our neighbor's house and said, "Where is this song from?" and he and two other guys started humming into the phone. "Brian says it's from McHale's Navy but I think it has a Munsters vibe to it," he said.
"Hang on," I said, "and I'll call you guys right back."
I called Pam. "Duh-dunt-duh-duh . . ." I hummed a couple bars.
"Baby Elephant Walk," she said. "How are the kids?"
From that day on, Pam was a legend in my neighborhood for being the smartest woman anyone knew.
So when I called Pam to ask about the word I was trying to think of, I was surprised she didn't know the answer.
"Quaaludes?" she guessed. "You're not really looking for an actual drug to placate people are you?" It's nice to have a big sister to worry about you and any misguided schemes you might be plotting. But she was no help.
I made a third and last ditch effort with Siri. She gave me the name of a drug rehab center and the nearest Walgreens. And I think she might have called to report me to the ATF.
By this time, I had forgotten why I needed the word. None of it had anything to do with the guest blog post I was writing for the moving company. This tangent had just lowered my earning rate to about 3 cents per hour. I'll never be a successful freelance writer. But I now have a great idea for a social dystopian short story.
"What's the word for something that is just about to blow up in a world destruction kinda way, but is kind of simmering and festering and growing under the radar?"
The Man didn't answer.
