I often find it amusing that people everday, around the world, experience similar events in their day-to-day lives and that these experiences seldom have a name. Or, if it does have a name, it is so rarely known that people who use said term is either an immediate comedian or outcast.
So, for today, I share with you all the phenomenon known as “toilet foot”. You know…you’ve sat on the toilet a little longer than you should and your foot falls asleep. Then you have to walk back to your office/cubicle in an even funnier fashion than when you were headed to the restroom!
Do you have any unusual/unique names for common occurrences?
Ha. I love that someone tried to define it, but I don’t like that he assigned it the name “shuggleftulation.” Who’s going to say that? I’ve often referred to it as the “sidewalk shuffle,” also referred to as the “little sidewalk shuffle” and the “Who’s on first sidewalk shuffle.” Now that I’m consciously writing these down, the names seem a bit silly too, but people seem to know what I’m talking about right away. I suspect if I ever said shuggleftulation I’d be met with blank stares.
What about when you’re eating pizza or baked ziti or something similarly cheesy and you get that embarrassing string of cheese (sometimes multiple strings) hanging from your mouth, sometimes stretching all the way to the slice or plate?
The late douglas Adams made a valiant attempt to fill in some of these lexical gaps in The Meaning of Liff. An example:
Shoeburyness - “The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else’s bottom.”
My daughter taught me the term “sock wedgie” a year or so ago. It is when your sock creeps down into your shoe and the excess sock becomes wadded up in the toe room.
We need a word for when you’re walking down a crowded sidewalk and suddenly realize you’re headed in the wrong direction, but instead of doing a 180, you move over to the side of a building and start fidgeting around with your cell phone or otherwise pretending you need to pull over and handle something, allow for enough people to pass so that no one sees you head the opposite way, then turn around.