BOB
So there I was at my college reunion and my old classmate Bob walked up to me. I recognized him immediately. I said, "Bob! It's so great to see you!"
Bob froze in his tracks, shivered all over, turned a little purple, rolled his eyes, sighed with a martyr's exasperation, took a gargantuan here-we-go-again breath, and informed me, "I reject both those assignments, 'Bob' and 'you.' I never asked for the name 'Bob' and don't identify with it. And 'you' is a reductionist objectification, disempowering my existential authenticity and cosmic linkage. I reject all names and pronouns as pernicious instruments of divisiveness and oppression. Instead of a name, my Self-Validation Term is The-One-Who-Peers-Assiduously-Into-The-Unknowable-Coalescense-of-Allness. And instead of a pronoun, I go by my SVT's acronym TOWPAITUCOA. So, while you may have said something like 'Bob lost his glasses' back in the day, before I was woke, now you have to say, 'The-One-Who-Peers-Assiduously-Into-The-Unknowable-Coalescense-of-Allness lost TOWPAITUCOA's glasses.'"
With that, he snapped his mouth shut with a so-there smirk and waited, staring at me.
"Oh," I replied. "Well, isn't that fascinating. And quite a mouthful, too. Not sure I can remember all that. How 'bout I just don't say ANY name or pronoun...or whatever you--er, whatever it was just referred to as alternatives. I'll just leave all that out and make it easier on both of...er, us--I'm sorry, is 'us' allowed?"
Bob glared at me, hissed, "Hater," and stomped off to another circle of folks. I heard, "Bob! It's so great to see you!" and rushed off to the punch bowl to avoid the replay.
Nevertheless, a few moments later Bob's voice rose stridently from across the room, "Say it! SAY it! SAAAAAAY!! IIIIIIIT!!!" Bob was shortly carried out by security, bewailing the world's injustice.
Just as Bob disappeared from the room, feet last, I looked down and saw the pair of glasses he'd been wearing on the floor. "Whaddya know," I announced to a stunned-looking lady next to me, "The-One-Who-Peers-Assiduously-Into-The-Unknowable-Coalescense-of-Allness lost TOWPAITUCOA's glasses."
