Beyond the Lantern's Glow

“Hark, Lord Bollemer, ye shall taste the steel of my Cursed Blade, and thine doom willst finally be upon you! Ready thyself!”

This past month, Parks & Rec has been doing a lot of work on the field adjacent to my school. They have trucks with flatbeds, mowing/tree-cutting/postholing machinery, etc. And when they arrived, I (campus monitor) was told I would need to herd the kids away from the trucks/machinery and basically prevent them from creating a dangerous situation.

So when recess came around and the kids stampeded out the door I held them up and I said (being funny but at the same time serious, you know how it is, kids listen better if you're funny)

"Okay, I know that you're all smart AND mature, right? And talented and good looking? Definitely the smartest and most talented class in this school? (I say this to every class, they're all 'my favorites'.) And because you're SO intelligent and mature, I don't need to actually TELL you that these guys have vehicles and machinery that you need to stay clear of, right? Because I know you figured that out already, and I also know that YOU know how sad I would be if any of you were run over, or squashed, or had a pole fall on you. I would be SO SAD, like, I would probably have to lie down on the floor and cry. So you're not going to make me cry, right? I can trust you to stay away from the trucks and machines no matter where they are on the field? Because you're wonderful and amazing? My favorites? My inspiration?"

And they're laughing at me of course, because I'm being so dramatic. Some of them are "Yes, and-"ing my dramatics and inventing more involved mourning processes I should undertake if any of them get run over. Some of them are yelling at me that they are NOT mature yet and they are VERY STUPID and I should know this.

It's been three weeks. We had one conversation about it. None of them have gone anywhere near the trucks. This is actually in excess of the typical elementary-schooler's working memory and I'm very proud of them. I haven't had to blow the whistle at ONE person for getting too close even when the trucks were literally 40 feet from the actual playground.

Princess: an effeminate and relatively youthful male homosexual or lesbian (1931-4)

Daffodil: effeminate young man (1925)

To throw a fuck into: to have sex with (1919)

Top sergeant: a masculine lesbian (1939) [‘she takes command of the girls’ privates’]

Lily: penis (1919)

Wolf: sexually aggressive man (1847); a homosexual top (1918)

Soul kiss: a deep kiss, involving putting one’s tongue into one’s partner’s mouth (1907)

Tom: a lesbian (1909); [in 'old tom'] prostitute catering to lesbians (1966)

Church mouse: a male homosexual who frequents crowded churches in order to fondle any potential sex partners. (1941)

Discover one's gender: to accept or acknowledge one’s homosexuality (1941) / Lose one's gender: To return to living as a heterosexual

Minty: a masculine lesbian (1941)

Also a lot of early 20th century vulgarity is recorded in Letter from My Father, which is a collection of letters published by a man who's dad was, in short, a major slut and human disaster who wrote about his sex life for his son. It's insane. You can find copies of it online & it's a wild fucking read (literally!) and I think a really interesting look at the life of a person who goes against our stereotypes of what people in the past were "supposed" to be like.

note for writers: these are dated to the first time they were recorded, not necessarily to their first use. I imagine for many of these, they came about naturally through spoken language before they were written down anywhere. This is especially true of more underground slang because it's probably being recorded (in ways we still have) the least. So if you wanna use a term but it's a little off date-wise, give yourself some wiggle room.

also gonna take this moment to highlight two more i found recently:

Best boy: a sweetheart, a boyfriend, a husband. (1893) [w the obvious equivalent term 'best girl']

Honeydripper or honeydrips: a sexual partner (1917)

but then I realised that same challenge would be infinitely more funny with folks who have atypical or horror OCs

And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.

A website of tiny ceramic frogs.

Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.

I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.

“This is your website?” I asked finally.

“Yep!”

“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.

“Yep!”

“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”

“I made those too,” he says, beaming. 

And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.

“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”

It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team. 

Via mastodon(aka the fediverse)

Edited to add: Since a lot of people are reblogging this original post, I'm adding the updated version I did that incorporates the intersex circle...