Nathan W. Ho

So, my sister calls me up recently (with a grin in her voice – you can totally hear it), and tells me that a co-worker shared something with her that she wanted to tell me. Apparently her co-worker had seen an interesting bumper sticker, and found it both confusing and funny – so my sister then proceeds to toss out this phrase to me:

Subduction leads to orogeny

And I’m thinking, “what the….great, from the mind of a pervert with a truly pathetic grasp of the English language” – but she patiently asks me, “Do you know what that means? Does it make sense to you?” in a hinting kind of way. She then spells out the words for me, and I take the time to look up their meaning (which slowly come back to me from my college earth sciences class…)

Orogeny (def): the process of mountain formation especially by folding of the earth’s crust

Subduction (def): the action or process in plate tectonics of the edge of one crustal plate descending below the edge of another

So after my sister and I stopped giggling, I stopped to think about this phrase a little more. I mean, c’mon – you *know* that the author(s) didn’t intend for you to read it the first time correctly (I’m guessing a bunch of geologists who were up too late drinking came up with this one – it’s right up there with “Don’t take salt for granite” / “don’t take salt for granted”). Whomever created that bumper sticker totally expects you to read it this way:

Seduction leads to erogeny

Of course, erogeny isn’t a real word – but by inference, it leads to the word “erogenous” – which is a very well known word in the adult world today *ahem* Both phrases make sense, but one is innocent in it’s basic meaning (the meaning – NOT the author’s intent), while the other is obviously not.

So, an interesting sticker – albeit not one I’ll ever own or put on something…

My sister and I then started discussing with whom else we should share this interesting sticker statement – and we instantly thought of our older sister (who is pregant), which then lead me to come up the following list:

Reponses to “Subduction leads to Orogeny” from:

• A pregnant woman: “Shut up – I know, I’m pregnant!!” (followed by a thrown object)
• A nerdy scientist: “Don’t I wish…..umm, wait….?”
• A parent: “It had better not, or you’re going to be grounded until you turn 50!!!
• A teenager: “heh heh heh……yeah….”
• A cop: “I’m going to have to write you a ticket for that…”
• A preacher: “You’re going to go to hell for that…HUH!!!”
• A biker (motorcycle): “Heck, that’s nothing…why just last week I….”
• A little old lady: “WELL!! Back in MY day, we didn’t use THAT kind of language in public…”

Feel free to come up with your own fun response….