Following is an e-mail to my oldest brother, who, like me, is a logophile. We often e-mail each other about interesting words we’ve discovered, or–just as often, now that we’re both middle-aged–asking the other to remind us of the word for.... He called me last night on that sort of quest.
"This morning, I got the message you left last night, trying to find out what the word is for when things are out to get us. Speaking of things being out to get me, my new droid phone doesn't beep every minute, like my last one did, to let me know I have a message. In fact, it does nothing to let me know I have a message, unless I happen to be looking right at it. I'm sure there's a setting somewhere where I could change this, if only I could figure it out. But for now, I figure I'm doing well just to be able to answer the *^%$& thing.
"Nope. I can't think of the word, either. I spent altogether too much time searching our old e-mails for it, but couldn't' find it there. I keep my own personal dictionary of fun and unusual words, but I took it off my work computer and put it on a jump drive. I wonder which jump drive? And I wonder where it is? No doubt, it's hiding from me. They do that, you know."
Later, his wife thought of the word: "resistentialism." This particular brother of mine does not understand resistentialism himself. My family is firmly split on this philosophy, with some of us knowing that chairs do, in fact, jump out and stub our toes, while the others are completely unaware of this quite obvious behavior on the part of things. Please note that the "resistance" in "resistentialism" is not on the part of the humans involved. It is not that we are resistant to things. The resistance is on the part of the things, which are locked in constant (and apparently mortal) combat with us–probably for domination of the planet.
Right now, it’s hard for me to say who is winning.
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