Forgive my lack of specific recollection. The mood and the mode of the moment can be conjured up quite vividly. Was I at work? Was I talking to a friend? Alas, I can't recall. However, I remember how it went down.

Someone had told me something. It was one of those somewhat ludicrous things one tells/reveals/fabricates about oneself in order to get a reaction. Or maybe not. Maybe it was one of those things one expects to casually mention with the expectation of complete normalcy, only to be greeted with befuddlement and skepticism. Regardless, when this person told me this thing, I, like any smartass of my generation, naturally responded with a dose of sarcasm. "That's..." I said, my mind in pursuit of the perfect word. It had to be something somewhat colloquial, though safely out of everday vernacular; a faded buzzword sentenced to ironic utility. Got it. "That's nifty," I cocked my brow and smirked in a fashion to ensure that I would never choose to denote the niftiness of something with the word "nifty."

This was a few weeks ago. "Nifty" now pops up in my day-to-day lexicon several times a day. And I say it with utter sincerity. When something's nifty, I mean that it's nifty. I'm not entirely comfortable with this. Every time I drop it, I follow it up with an internal What the fuck, man? Of course, I project this reaction onto the people who hear me say this. Sure, it might not actually register with them. However, it makes the air around me tense. The way I say it doesn't communicate irony. It communicates the word "nifty."

This isn't the first time I've unintentionally facilitated a verbal construct into my language. One of the hilarious mistranslations on an old DVD of the the positively brilliant Love on Delivery was the phrase "take her advantage." See, that doesn't really work. It needs to be "take advantage of her." However, due to excessive repetition among friends, the line has been blurred and it no longer seems improper.

Furthermore, a few years back, during one of my recurring Mad About You kicks, I noticed Paul Reiser's character's quirks was - when listing things - that he would designate the first item in a list "A" and the second one "two." What a brilliant juxtaposition! Considering the fact that I often wish I were Paul Reiser*, I thought it'd be fun to insert it into my conversation once or twice, just to see if anyone caught the reference.

These days, it takes a strong, concsious effort to sidestep this linguistic aberration. Instead, no one's mentioned it. I suspect this is because they think I'm just an idiot.

*This fact sometimes gets a very severe "What the fuck?" as I recently received from my roommate. I don't understand why everyone doesn't love Paul Reiser. He's awesome.