Solid

“Last night wasn’t the best time I ever had,” the brunette at Panera Bread told her blonde dinner companion, “but it was solid.”

These two twenty-something females were seated in a booth in front of mine. The booth blocked my view, but having seen them arrive I could tell they were cute. As I finished my bacon turkey bravo on rye with tomato soup, I had nothing to do but listen to the rambling thoughts in my own head or eavesdrop on them. The thoughts in my head are more interesting, but I’ve thought them before, so I listened in.

They spoke softly enough that all I could hear were snatches of their conversation. The brunette did all the talking. The only thing that interested me was her use of the word “solid” to describe her evening: “Last night wasn’t the best time I ever had, but it was solid.”

“George, do me a solid,” Kramer once said on an episode of Seinfeld. The brunette seemed to use “solid” in the same way, thereby reducing a perfectly respectable word to a cheap slang expression. “Awesome” fell victim more than a decade ago, and has been banished from my vocabulary as a result. “Solid” may survive, but I’ll be careful to use it sparingly.

© 2013 Brian W. Fairbanks

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