Some words are too useful to use in ordinary situations - they aren’t that worthy, no matter how many times the waitress or clerk says, ‘Awesome,’ ten times during a meal or a try-on of clothes, “Oh, that’s so awesome” … because they lack imagination or vocabulary to support what is actually happening.
NO, the Grand Canyon is awesome, the Northern Lights/aurora borealis are awesome, childbirth is awesome, and a hole-in-one is awesome - unless it’s mini-golf.
Significance doesn’t ask whether we’re ready, or whether we’ll like it.
MOM
(that’s WOW upside down)
“WOW … that’s big news!”
~ that phrase, that’s my invention.
I’m reasonably certain nobody put those words together before I did, so I’m claiming it the way a gold-rush prospector planted a stake and declared the ground his.
I’ll keep claiming it until somebody produces contrary evidence.
It isn’t an every-hour, every-day exclamation.
That would cheapen it.
For me, WOW is reserved for news big enough to interrupt the ordinary flow of things. It makes us look twice, choke up, grin, swear softly, roar, or simply sit still for a moment.
And “big” doesn’t automatically mean good.
The better test is this: did something just happen that changes what you thought you knew, expected, feared, hoped, or imagined might come to be today?
