An addition to your vocabulary
I was invited to a party today.
And if that in and of itself isn’t reason enough to celebrate, I probably won’t be able to put my socially deprived finger on what exactly is. But it really wasn’t the unexpected validation of a semi-existent social life that piqued my interest - it was the content of the Evite dialogue that got me thinking.
The invitation read like this, “As always, friends, family, significant others, HLPs, etc. are welcome.”
Ok, I’m pretty sure I know what friends and family are, and I’m even rather certain about significant others, but HLPs? At first, I drew an absolute blank. My initial conclusions were nothing short of pathetic.
Hip-Livin’ Posse?
Horrendously Long Phriendship? (For you Phish fans out there)
Happenin’ and Lively Peeps?
No, no, and no. An HLP is a Heterosexual Life Partner. And what is a Heterosexual Life Partner you most certainly ask? According to the “Urban Dictionary” an HLP is defined as follows:
Two persons of the same gender who are best friends and commit to spend their lives together, yet never engage in any type of homosexual relations with one another.
Some notable HLPs are of course, Jay and Silent Bob, Beavis and Butthead, Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel, Cheech and Chong (along with the bong pipe), Beto and Raul, Pace and Baier, and I’m going to throw in Molder and Scully even though they break the same gender rule just because the X-Files was the last show I could tolerate on television.
And there you have it - an HLP is no longer a mystery to you or me. So, after rolling this bit of newfound information around in my mind for a while I came to the painful conclusion that I have an HLP! The only exception is the commitment part - evidently commitment phobia transcends romantic and non-romantic relationships. How cool.
He would be incredibly irate if he knew I was publishing this to the free and un-free world today, but it’s ok, because he doesn’t read my blogs anyway. Shhhhhh.
So what’s up with this new HLP thing? It has to be a relatively modern phenomenon. I don’t think there were too many people going to discos in 1975 with their HLP. John Travolta would certainly have not stood for that. But now, hell, we’ll do anything with an HLP. Well, almost anything.
I think, nowadays, people don’t feel like getting married as much. We grow up with divorce rate statistics in our head and they ring like hyperactive church bells at the first sign of dysfunction in a relationship. It’s so much easier to have an HLP with whom to share rent, experiences, bad days, good days, rented movies and the occasional gallon of 2% milk. And in the event of divorce, you don’t lose half your worldly possessions (although you may have to take the gas grille instead of the people swallowing couch, or vise versa).
Plus, for some reason they don't seem to mind as much when you have a headache.
Hack into your HLP’s email account and write to John Poole at poolejohn@gmail.com
And if that in and of itself isn’t reason enough to celebrate, I probably won’t be able to put my socially deprived finger on what exactly is. But it really wasn’t the unexpected validation of a semi-existent social life that piqued my interest - it was the content of the Evite dialogue that got me thinking.
The invitation read like this, “As always, friends, family, significant others, HLPs, etc. are welcome.”
Ok, I’m pretty sure I know what friends and family are, and I’m even rather certain about significant others, but HLPs? At first, I drew an absolute blank. My initial conclusions were nothing short of pathetic.
Hip-Livin’ Posse?
Horrendously Long Phriendship? (For you Phish fans out there)
Happenin’ and Lively Peeps?
No, no, and no. An HLP is a Heterosexual Life Partner. And what is a Heterosexual Life Partner you most certainly ask? According to the “Urban Dictionary” an HLP is defined as follows:
Two persons of the same gender who are best friends and commit to spend their lives together, yet never engage in any type of homosexual relations with one another.
Some notable HLPs are of course, Jay and Silent Bob, Beavis and Butthead, Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel, Cheech and Chong (along with the bong pipe), Beto and Raul, Pace and Baier, and I’m going to throw in Molder and Scully even though they break the same gender rule just because the X-Files was the last show I could tolerate on television.
And there you have it - an HLP is no longer a mystery to you or me. So, after rolling this bit of newfound information around in my mind for a while I came to the painful conclusion that I have an HLP! The only exception is the commitment part - evidently commitment phobia transcends romantic and non-romantic relationships. How cool.
He would be incredibly irate if he knew I was publishing this to the free and un-free world today, but it’s ok, because he doesn’t read my blogs anyway. Shhhhhh.
So what’s up with this new HLP thing? It has to be a relatively modern phenomenon. I don’t think there were too many people going to discos in 1975 with their HLP. John Travolta would certainly have not stood for that. But now, hell, we’ll do anything with an HLP. Well, almost anything.
I think, nowadays, people don’t feel like getting married as much. We grow up with divorce rate statistics in our head and they ring like hyperactive church bells at the first sign of dysfunction in a relationship. It’s so much easier to have an HLP with whom to share rent, experiences, bad days, good days, rented movies and the occasional gallon of 2% milk. And in the event of divorce, you don’t lose half your worldly possessions (although you may have to take the gas grille instead of the people swallowing couch, or vise versa).
Plus, for some reason they don't seem to mind as much when you have a headache.
Hack into your HLP’s email account and write to John Poole at poolejohn@gmail.com
posted by John Poole at 9:00 PM
1 Comments:
Dude, you hittin' the 2%? Thought you were a skim guy.
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