Warning: For the Immature Only (you know that means you...)

So far this Blog has essentially been a recap of how Courtney and I met, how I met the parents, The Proposal, and little tidbits about the house and the wedding. I think the “honeymoon” period for this Blog is over. We need to discuss important issues, debate the facts, and be respectful of each other’s opinions. Like mature adults would do. Yeah…that isn’t this post. This would be a linguistic adventure into the immature side of life.

The first thing you need to understand is that I have a lot of friends and family who are teachers. One of my friends, Dan, is a Middle school teacher. We share a mutual respect for laughing at the less mature side of life. This is about Dan and his amazing linguistic abilities. To illustrate, I’ll tell you this story. Because he teaches middle school there is already an element of immaturity in his students. So on occasion, Dan takes advantage of this and when he feels the need to, shall we say, flatulate, yet maintains the façade of being the mature adult in full control of his classroom. He will wander up and down the aisles of hard working students diligently expanding their minds in the science lab (apparently burning Captain Crunch is science these days, but that is for another day…). While they are hard at work, he will slowly over the distance of a few students let the fumigation begin. He refers to this as “crop dusting”. I find this ingenious. The brilliance of it is when 30 seconds later while back at his desk, one student will smell the poisonous emissions and start blaming another kid, who then gets defensive and says amazing retaliatory remarks like “whoever smelt it dealt it!” Dan will usually sit back at his desk and admire his handy work, before admonishing the immaturity and telling them to be grown up and get back to work. Like the Guinness commercial’s say…”Brilliant!”

Which is a nice run up to my next story. I work on a 9 story building and use the elevator to get up and down, most all employees do. On one occasion I was on the 4th floor heading up to the 9th. When the elevator dinged to tell me which one of the elevator cars was there to pick me up, someone was getting off while I was getting on. Little did I know, that someone left me a little surprise. As I got on, I pushed the 9th floor button and the doors closed. Before the car even moved I smelled the stink of another human beings fecal dust. Nowhere to go. Nothing I can do. And then it got really fun…the elevator car stopped on floor 7 to let someone else in to the car of weaponized biological gas that George W thought that Sadam had. He was wrong. It was here in his home state! So to my horror I could just picture this person getting on and thinking “you disgusting human being!” So what do I do? Do I acknowledge the stink? Say, sorry about the smell, someone just got off who obviously wasn’t feeling well. Who would believe that!? That is like starting off an embarrassing story with “This happened to a friend of mine…” everyone knows this is code for, I have to tell you what happened to me but I am going to hide it in a story about my mythical friend. Do I ignore the smell and pretend like nothing is wrong? Maybe they won’t notice the day old sweaty sock smell. It took them about 3 seconds to assess the situation and regret the decision to get in the elevator. Great. So as I am processing all of this, I am quietly thinking in the back of my head how the person who got off on the 4th floor is at their desk now just loving their masterpiece. Had I not been the victim, I would be applauding this little bit of genius. The ride up to the 9th floor lasted forever as I just accepted my innocent shame and let the person off first hoping never to see them again.

On the ride back down, I recalled my predicament and thought of all the amazingly awkward situations that must arise daily from this kind of thing. Multiple people at once and someone lets a SBD out (silent but deadly) and no one knows who it was or who to blame and just lets Kenny G play on in this gleeful moment of forced maturity. ...or... The moment everyone gets off leaving you alone as you have one more floor to go up so you let loose and just before the door closes someone holds it open to get on…Oops.



The situations are endless! There had to be a term to describe this deliciously dastardly masterpiece of immaturity! So who do I turn to? Dan, my crop dusting linguistic genius of a friend. So after I explained the situation to him in all of its glory and possibility, he agreed that a term was definitely in order. We tossed a few ides back in forth and then settled on two. If you end up riding solo, or with one other person, and you gas someone and leave before they get locked in the death box, you just coffined someone. Yes. Like a burial chamber. You gassed them and left them for dead. You can also get coffined. It can be a versatile term. In the situation of multiple people…the SBD situation…then what you are doing is beyond coffining, it is a moment of sharing. It is now forever in my vocabulary to refer to this as carpooling. This actually arose from the situation of someone gassing others out in a moving vehicle. We figure it can be applied to both the elevator and the car. No need to limit ourselves in such matters.



So the next time you are waiting for an elevator, be aware of others coffining you. But I would always applaud a well timed toot coffining someone. For they too may have the pleasure of experiencing an innocent horror 2 floors up that they have no way to explain to their new friends. They just have to get in the carpool and like it. Go forth and create masterpieces of awkwardness!

Jon