Are you driven by opportunity or by obligation?
The only similarity is that they both begin with ‘o’, but is that ‘oh yes!’, or is it ‘oh koi.’.
Let me take a minute to explain where the fish fits in. Back before WhatsApp and other chat channels, during the working day Russ and I would communicate by email. Both our employers had rather strict filters around profaninty. Neither the usual ‘sh!t’, not the alternative ‘cr@p’ were tolerated. Not even with the same symbol replacement as shown here. I doubt I stand alone when I say that these 2 words are extemely expressive and don’t have a powerful enough ‘clean’ alternative to make them unnecessary. Well not in my mind, anyway.
To solve the problem, ‘Cr@p’ became carp – an innocent word that slipped by unnoticed. We knew what we meant, and that was perfect. Time for a very quick biology lesson, did you know that koi are a type of carp? Neither did I, but once I found out, there were koi all over the place. Ok, not that bad, but the koi certainly got their day out.
So why did this work? Simple, both Russ and I had a common understanding of our meaning, even if it made no sense to anyone else. That’s fine, we did not need it to, although a number of my friends have spoken about what happens when the koi hits the fan. I’ll give you a hint – there are no fish scales flying around.
Reality check, this post has not followed the flight plan orginally intended, in fact it missed the plane all together. No matter, change of both journey and destination 🙂
The lesson:-
Many couples have at least some ‘secrets’ no one else understands.
It’s fun to play with words, as long as you can still be understood.
Lastly, but not leastly, creativity trumps restrictions!
We’ll go back to opportunity and obligation some other time….