Words are tough. The cast of ‘Jersey Shore’ shows us this on a weekly basis. Still, little linguistic pet peeves manage to infiltrate our conversations daily. The ways in which other people’s language can grate our psyches like blocks of delicious sharp cheddar are abundant.

 

Personally, hyperbole is the bane of my linguistic existence. Our culture’s love of hyperbole reeks of the same foul passion that exists between Flavor Flav and his legion of skanks. It’s gross, it needs to be stopped, and we really, really, really need to stop encouraging it. One word reigns as the fascist dictator of this putrid realm.

 

‘Ever.’

 

Maybe people are oblivious to the fact, but the word is being thrown around with all the grace and precision of Stephen Hawking on the dance floor. The word encompasses that broad period of time we refer to as the past. Yet, most of the time when I hear it spewing forth from a peer’s mouth, it emerges with all the recklessness of a NASCAR junkie tweaking on crystal meth while driving on black ice in a whiteout blizzard.

How many times have you had this conversation?

 

Peer: ‘Oh man, the funniest thing ever happened to me today.’

Me: ‘Do tell.’

Peer: ‘Well, I was walking up the stairs to my class, and my prof was walking in front of me. He was carrying a big stack of papers and talking on his cell phone, so he wasn’t paying total attention to where he was walking. All of a sudden, he clips a stair with his toe and totally eats it! The papers fly everywhere!’

Me: ‘So, in your view, that is the funniest thing ever? Nothing in the history of time, or at least in your life scope of reference, has compared to this glorious lack of balance? The great Shakespearean comedies, the slapstick timing of the Three Stooges, the vast sea of television sitcoms, Ron Burgundy’s poor choice of milk on a hot San Diegan day — all these (and many more) pale in comparison to this tumble. Or so your verbiage denotes.’

Now this reaction may seem harsh, but ‘ever’ carries such substantial weight. Maybe the following line of thought will ring truer for the college crowd.

 

‘Dude, you should’ve come out with us last night. It was, like, the best night ever!’

‘Really, what happened?’

‘Aw bro, like everyone was there. And we got super wasted. Bobby passed out, and we drew on him with a marker. Or at least I think we did. I blacked out some time after midnight and woke up face-down on the floor.’

Really? That kind of sounds like a minor variation on the same story you told last weekend, and the weekend before that, and the weekend before that…

The best night ever would be far more epic in scale. Perhaps your favorite band’s van would break down outside your house, leading to a killer house show. Immediately following the set, Nickelback’s tour bus breaks down in front of your place, only it bursts into a ball of fire. You and all your pals then proceed to roast marshmallows for s’mores over the flames to celebrate the resulting miracle.

Then you finally get up the gumption to talk to the girl/guy you’ve been crushing on all semester, and the feeling is mutual. Everyone cleans up before they bolt, so you’re not forced deal with the mess in the morning. Nobody has an aching hangover when the sun rises. And there’d be balloons because, obviously, the best night ever would have balloons. Something like that could warrant best night ever. Any less than that, and I refuse to buy it.

So I ask you — nay, beg you — to strike the hyperbole of ‘ever’ from your vocabulary. Doing so would be the best thing ever.

… Damn it.

Seth Sommerfeld is a graduate student in the Goldring Arts Journalism Program and the humor columnist. His columns appear weekly, and he can be reached at srsommer@syr.edu. Dakota Fanning is slated to star as Seth in his upcoming biopic.

Published on September 8, 2010 at 12:00 pm