I WAS A TRENDSETTER

I was about eight years old. I was in my bedroom with my friends Derek and Andy and we were discussing the things pre-pubescent boys most commonly discuss. You know, the three B's:  baseball, basketball, and boobies.

Not necessarily in that order.

Now that I think of it, more often than not two of the B's would be completely overlooked and the brunt of the conversation would focus on the third.

Boobs or Michael Jordan? Breasts or Mark McGwire?  Tits or Chicago Bulls journeyman, Craig Hodges?

Michael Jordan was a hell of a player and his rookie card is worth a bundle, but I can't bury my face in between him, shake my head side to side and blow.

Well, maybe I could.

Why would I want to though?

My mother opened the door unexpectedly, "Steven, don't you think it's about time your friends went home? It's getting late."

"Aw, come on, Ma! Right now?"

"Yes Steven, right now. Come on guys, it's time for you to head on home."

"Geez mom! This sucks! Why do you have to be such a jerk! FARSH!"

FARSH?

Did I say FARSH?

What the hell is FARSH?

My mother looked at me like I was an idiot. Like I was a monkey tossing his feces around at the zoo. Like I was some helmet wearing special day student with a mouthful of paste and glitter and safety scissors.

I’m thinking it’s the very same look people give Madonna whenever she asks them what they thought of her performance in, Evita.

Under normal circumstances my mother might have been mad at me for calling her a jerk, but the whole "FARSH" thing at the end threw her for a loop. She wasn’t mad so much as confused – confused and maybe a little disappointed.

You're no doubt wondering, just as she was, what the hell FARSH was supposed to mean and why I said it? Well, here’s the deal. When I was a kid, I not only created a word, but I popularized that word among my friends and even people who I didn't consider my friends.

That word was FARSH.

FARSH was huge. FARSH was popular and everyone in the world was using FARSH.

Of course, when you're eight the whole “world” is little more than the town you live in and the school you attend, but whatever.

FARSH was awesome and I was awesome for creating it. FARSH was exactly the kick in the pants our little town needed. It was revolutionary. It was an epidemic. It changed everything it touched and touched everything it changed. It wasn’t just an idea – it was the idea. It was the very definition of the word idea. FARSH caught on quicker than "That's Hot," a few years back, and in my own little way I was cooler than Paris Hilton.

You know, without the parties, or the money, or the drugs, or the constant television coverage, or the horrible movies and the sort of scary, sort of hilarious sex tape.

Oh, and without me being a complete idiot.

I was only a partial idiot.

I've been typing FARSH in caps because FARSH wasn't so much spoken, as it was screamed. In order to use FARSH correctly, one was expected to belt it with every ounce of breath they could muster. It was also required that the person screaming FARSH make an entirely random gesture to work alongside.

Almost anything was acceptable.

I personally liked to tilt my head to the right and pucker my lips like Angelina Jolie as drawn by Tex Avery.

FARSH had no specific meaning. FARSH was beyond such frivolities. It could express anger. It could express happiness. It could express confusion. If an exclamation point had a specific sound, that sound would be FARSH.

At the time, I was proud of FARSH.

FARSH was my greatest achievement.

Everyone was using FARSH, and they all knew where exactly where FARSH had originated.

FARSH was big.

FARSH was real big.

FARSH was John Holmes big.

I started flashing around the fact that I created FARSH to anyone within earshot. FARSH was like an expensive car, or a gold record, or a mansion, or an oversized dong. FARSH was all of them combined. The boys were jealous of me because of FARSH's existence and the girls loved me for the very same reason.

I could have stolen kisses from any of the eight year-old girls on the playground. I was king shit. I had my pick of the litter.

I was on top of the world.

FARSH!

I’m just wonderig if anyone else is getting sick of me typing the word FARSH so much?

Cause you should be.

Suddenly, one day in math class everything changed. Like all great things, even FARSH had to end.

The downfall of FARSH began with my math teacher, Mr. Anderson. Mr. Anderson was one of those young teachers who liked to “get through” to his students by lowering himself to their level and "mixing it up.” He was the kind of teacher that would work in timely Ninja Turtle'esque words like "radical," or "awesome," into his lessons - pretty much anything to get his kids to learn long division.

One day Anderson walked into class, dropped his case on his desk, and straightened his tie. "Are you guys ready to buckle down and get to some serious math today?"

Of course no one was.

Noticing that the response from his class was less than energetic he made the choice to play the cool-guy card. "Radical! I want you guys to get out your homework, pass it up front and then we'll get to the fun stuff! Farsh!"

You've got to be kidding me. Did Anderson just say FARSH?

 My FARSH?

He did! That douche bag just blurted out my FARSH! And he didn't even do it right!

He lame-o'ed the hell out of my FARSH! Damn it!

FARSH!

When the math teacher uses a cool word, the coolness factor of that word immediately plummets into the soil, digs its way to the center of the earth and eventually resurfaces somewhere around Australia.

Australia - they always get the cool stuff when it’s no longer cool.

FARSH went from epic win to epic fail in less time than it took for the world to forget that Michael Jackson’s nickname was actually, Molesty McMolseterson.

The very instant FARSH was played out, so was I.

Hungry for the spotlight, I attempted to start up a new cool word - tried to catch lightening in a bottle just one more time. The word was SAMMY. SAMMY was basically used exactly like FARSH. There was a simultaneous funny-face thing attached to it and a weird hand gesture hand thing and there was even some screaming.

In the end, well, SAMMY was just SAMMY and SAMMY never caught on.

I looked like an idiot whenever I used SAMMY.

In fact, I’m going to stop capitalizing sammy. Sammy doesn’t deserve a caps lock.

I was a one hit wonder. I was Winger. I was Wham, and I was Tone Loc and I was Vanilla Ice.

I was a has been.

Fame is a fickle mistress.

FARSH.

See, FARSH works pretty well for sadness too.