Why I hate Friday the 13th, the date not the movie

As you probably all know, yesterday was Friday the 13Th. Hooray! This is the worst of all possible weekday/date combinations for me. It's not because I subscribe to some sort of archaic set of absurd superstitions and, therefore, fear walking out of my house on Friday the 13Th because I am certain that something terrible will happen to me. It is because this date takes one of the things I love, language, and destroys it while taking one of the things I hate, morons, and heightens them to an obscene level.

As happens on every Friday the 13Th in small towns and giant urban complexes presumably all over the world but most certainly here in America, idiots who heard a big word at some point and somehow managed to remember it are out in droves. Typically when these people speak they produce, perhaps, one sentence out of ten that can be properly diagrammed. The other nine sentences are an absolutely nightmarish collection of sentence fragments and dangling participles and some errors so grievous that we do not even have words in our language to describe them. We didn't think we needed to create these words because surely nobody would be idiotic enough to speak that poorly. We were wrong.

The one big word that these people know is, evidently, triskaidekaphobia. I have no idea where they encountered this word but somehow they all know it. It was probably a running gag on an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond or whatever it is that people like that watch in their spare time. I'm pretty sure they aren't watching Masterpiece Theater. All of these morons use this word and once or twice a year, or in this case in consecutive months, they get to use it. There is, however, a problem. Two problems actually.

The first problem is that this word does not apply specifically to Friday the 13Th. Triskaidekaphobia is simply an irrational fear of the NUMBER 13, in all forms. When I heard an idiot on the train on my way to work yesterday tell his buddy, "Hey it's Friday the 13Th, all those people with triskaidekaphobia had better watch out", I wanted to rip my face off. There is a word that is specific to a fear of Friday the 13Th which would actually apply in this situation. You see, "people with triskaidekaphobia" have to watch out all the time. There is a greater than zero chance that, on any given day, they will encounter the dreaded number thirteen and go into a panic so Friday the 13Th is really no different to them than any other day. The word for people who specifically fear Friday the 13Th is paraskevidekatriaphobia. The reason that you don't hear people use this word is because it is much longer and harder to say. So beef number one that I have is that people are pretending to be smarter than they are by using a big word but, in that typical Idiocracy fashion of theirs, they are using it incorrectly. This would make them look like an idiot if they didn't surround themselves with other complete morons who look at them in awe anytime something multi syllabic comes out of their mouth.

There is also problem number two which is basically the same as problem number one. There is also a word for people who fear the number thirteen and it is not, "people with triskaidekaphobia." The word is triskaidekaphobic, as in, "I am terrified by the number thirteen and I don't know why. My therapist says I am a triskaidekaphobic."

Every Friday the 13Th I have to listen to these idiots take a word that they have no business using in the first place and absolutely destroy its usage not once, but twice. All the while their little buddies laugh and nod approvingly as if, somehow, knowing someone who is able to use a big word (albeit dreadfully incorrectly) makes them smarter by proxy. What the fuck is wrong with you people. It's OK to not have a wide vocabulary. I would contend that one could probably get by if they only knew about 500 words. If that is you, don't worry about it, but don't try to pretend to be something you aren't.

Glad I was able to get that off my chest, I feel better. At least until next Friday the 13Th.