Once upon a time, in a blog far far away I wrote a post about the popularity of the word random amongst our young. It was largely used to describe something vaguely uncool.
At that point it was, in my view, a teen word used by other people's children.
But no more.
A week or so ago randoms invaded here at Chez EasternMax. And not just the 10yo, the 8yo too. Everything was random. Haircuts were random, ideas were random, the cats did random things and of course, all parents were random. I've altogether had enough of randomness.
Random not only seems to mean that something is vaguely uncool it can also mean weird, but in a good way or weird, but in a bad way. A versatile word, and vaguely annoying. A random word.
But I have solved this preposterous offence to my ears in one fell swoop. Every time I heard the word random uttered by my offspring I made an animal noise - chicken, cow, horse, sheep - sometimes one, sometimes a whole barnyard. This may be funny at home, but truly embarrassing at the supermarket.
And as with all well-designed incentive plans, the attack of the randoms has stopped.
Hallelujah.
