“I need to use the john” – a very common thing everybody says when running to respond to the nature’s call, John being the known-to-all slang for toilet. Speaking of which, the American list of slangs is turgid and ever increasing.Here people don’t sit and talk , they always hang around, though no strings are seen anywhere to hang with. They never pick up or take something, they always grab.There is a slang for everything, and I keep discovering new ones now and then, when I fail to understand what is being talked about, then either wait for a second occurence of it to corelate or look up the omniscient google. Yes, one would be really amazed and entertained to see the searches I make the search engines do.
Well using slangs is really cool, and cool is something appearing everywhere, which can be a universal adjective to every noun and verb on earth and it is the thing everybody is running after.The quest for cool never ends even in freezing winters when I just abhor the word cool -please give me something warm, that is not cool.
So the parlance would just not exist if it were not for these other friendly names for everything.But use-the-john definitely makes me feel bad for all those uncountable Johns and Jons that cohabit this planet. Well I don’ t have any figures to concrete the fact that John/Jon is a very very common American name. You take a glance at the yellow book or simply just read the nametags outside peoples’ cubicles in any office and you would be amazed at the occurrence of John Peters,Jon Lewis etc.
So why does everybody want to derogate the name to refer it to a toilet? And if my little knowledge of Bible,which is attributed to my schooling in a Christian convent, is correct, I recall that John was one of the most arrant famous disciples of Jesus Christ, who is referred to Saint John. Or maybe St John was an altogether different person, but my point is that John in any case is a reverent and holy name that people like to call their children with.It has its roots in the Christ or pre-Christ era. Then who gave the modern era common man a right to make that name synonymous with a shitpot?
Again coolness is to blame here. Anything insulting or offending is branded cool and shrugged off.And this thought strikes me everytime I see a ‘Rent-a-John’ which is a portable toilet and everytime people excuse themselves for using the john.
And I think how it would be if Indians were to say – “I have to use the Amit or Naresh ”. I thank God, it can never be. We are taught better than that, to know where fun ends and insult begins, though the line between them is invisibly thin.
Well now I have been hanging around a lot around this blog , so ending up this blabber.
An interesting perspective Sara.