Won’t You Join In My Crusade?

Today I have invented a new word that I want everyone to use as often as possible.

Pinger

Any nail clipping that manages to hit you in the eye or mouth when clipped, or stabs your skin when stepped on or laid upon.

There’s always one of these bastards during every self-grooming session or somewhere on every bed or couch. ‘Ware the pinger, my friends. It is evil and of the devil.

This new word is a word of utmost importance and necessity, and the people in charge of new words at Webster’s should add ‘pinger’ to the English language at their earliest convenience. It is vital that ‘pinger’ be added to everyone’s customized personal dictionary in MS Word ASAP because we’ve all suffered from the dreaded pain of a pinger, but we just couldn’t identify it by name before. Now, thanks to me, we can.

(A secondary benefit if pinger becomes a ‘real’ word is that we can then use it as a curse and everyone will understand what we mean. Doesn’t calling someone a pinger just sound like an insult?)

How did the name come about? I’m glad you asked.

I was sitting in my living room last night watching the Giants get bitch-slapped up and down the football field when it came to me. Actually, it hit me.

Right in the eye.

Somehow, while yet another stupid Giant penalty diverted my attention, my pinky-nail’s clipped-off refuse sprang free of the metallic nail-reaper in my hand and launched an all-out assault on my person. The miniscule missile of discarded detritus bypassed my impenetrable eye-shields known as ‘glasses’ and reached its target, my eye. The impact was somewhere slightly below and to the right of my iris, but lucky for me it hadn’t built up the necessary speed at impact yet and so failed to imbed itself in my flesh. Bouncing off my cornea, it could be heard screaming obscenities as its parachute failed to open and it fell to its death on my living room floor.

I couldn’t make out the words, but the meaning was clear.

To say that this clipping missile attack had upset me would be a massive understatement. I wanted to blast the now inert object of my wrath with a curse of such biblical proportions that Zeus himself would look down from Olympus and say “Damn, that guy’s pissed off!” My anger was so intense that I was sure I would set fire to that foul, pointy bastard with just the strength of my hatred and the potency of my curse.

It would rue the day. Oh yes, it would rue.

Grabbing my eye and rising to my feet, I pointed down at the offensive offspring of my least-used digit and let out a primal scream of pain and anger. Certain four-letter words came to my mind then, and as soon as I had strung them together into a pleasing, coherent and almost musical proclamation of death, I opened my mouth to speak and…

Nothing came out.

Did a sudden change of heart cause my silence? No. My friends I couldn’t speak simply because there was no word in the English language to describe or name the object of my ire and so my curses had no focus. I was made powerless by my inability to name my enemy. By not having a name to focus my rage upon I was left standing impotent like Bob Dole on prom night without Viagra. Yea, my rage was mighty and my wrath righteous, but I could do nothing but open and close my mouth like a fish out of water.

And as it lay there amidst its fallen brothers, the clipping mocked me.

For a fleeting moment I thought perhaps that I could call it Bob, or Dave, or Tony, or something else just to get on with the wrath of god stuff, but it just didn’t feel right to be cursing at ‘Dave the Clipping’ or ‘Joe the Nail’. Instead I sucked air through my clenched teeth, let out a grunt of anger and stomped off to the bathroom to flush my eye with cold water. As I turned to go however, the clipping added insult to injury by somehow getting underfoot and stabbing me in my heel.

Now, I was really angry.

I was so angry that I wanted to be able to curse not only this particular clipping, but also all the clippings that have come before or would ever come after. I didn’t want to curse only this one in particular you see, I wanted to curse it in general the same way you curse your ‘car’ and not your 1997, 4 cylinder, fuel-injection, eggshell white Toyota Camry. I also wanted everyone else who has ever been assaulted by these terrible minions of the devil to know what to call them and thus be able to curse them as I do. So I decided to create a name for these most vile of inanimate objects, and that’s how the word ‘pinger’ was born. I believe that if enough people use the word pinger then it will be added to the dictionary and if it’s added to the dictionary then it becomes a ‘real’ word. If the word is real, then the thing exists and then we can all curse the pinger’s and be happy.

And that’s all we really want, right? To be happy?

So I call upon all of you, my loyal readers, to join me in my quest. Join me in naming the pinger my friends, join me and let us change the English language forever, together. Join me in my hatred of the disgusting little buggers that plague our homes like locusts in the wheat fields. Join me and we will destroy them all with our collective curses. Join me in my Crusade and know happiness forever more.

Oh, just help me you pinger.