Monday, 04 April 2005 | Word inventions

M and C opened a record store-slash-café about a year ago. I was on the longish list of people M had asked to help think of a name for the store. (I don't think I gave her much to work with; I'm pretty terrible at that.) The process seemed rather long and complicated (no thanks to me), and I secretly hoped that it didn't mean that the venture was doomed.

Since then I've visited the store sporadically and have watched it evolve—from the beginning, when M lamented painting the bathroom with hot pink oil-based paint, to when she proudly hung her food license on the wall, to when the first burn welts grew out of her hands like hard-core badges. The store looks really good now, and every time I'm there, a new collection of shaggy, hip people bend over racks of vinyl and thumb through worn cardboard corners, or tap dance their fingers on pristine white laptops.

Yesterday Bryan and I sat in the front window and played Scrabble over coffee, while M sat next to us with her white laptop, volunteering to ask the online Miriam-Webster for assistance whenever one of us invented a word. The online Miriam-Webster has a feature that speaks the word out loud, so naturally M's "service" devolved into an exercise of her making the computer say surprise vulgar words in order to induce laughter. She let us pick apart a pink mint cupcake while Bryan and I did unorthodox things like help each other play the game by offering inter-team advice, or allowing almost-words to be counted. Also, we kept score but forgot to tally it.