I’ve been told I have a way with words.
After all, I’ve spent many years making a living writing them. But this summer I learned I’d apparently lost my way – at least when it comes to contemporary euphemisms.
Each year I host a gathering of friends in our backyard gazebo. The Great Gazebo Girlfriend Gathering provides a way for me to bring friends from varying parts of my life together to reflect, reminisce and laugh.
It’s also quite an educational event.
My friend, Judi, told us about her stay at a cute bed-and-breakfast with interesting room names.
“I saw that on Facebook!” I said. “I thought it was cool that your room was ‘Netflix and chill.’ ”
A brief silence fell.
Then someone giggled. Someone else tittered. Judi’s eyes got big.
“What?” I asked.
“Cindy, don’t you know what ‘Netflix and chill’ means?” my friend Sarah asked.
Puzzled, I gazed at her.
“Of course, I do,” I replied. “It means you’re going to watch a movie and relax.”
I’m pretty sure the resulting howls of laughter could be heard for miles.
Apparently, somehow, when I wasn’t looking, that innocently descriptive phrase has morphed into meaning something entirely different.
Here’s the Wikipedia definition: Netflix and chill, as a distinct phrase, means to watch Netflix with a romantic prospect with the eventual expectation of sexual activity.
And that’s the most family-friendly definition.
Reader, I beg of you, do not look this up in the Urban Dictionary.
Horrified, I gazed at my laughing friends.
A blush spread over my face and deepened to a reddish hue as I recalled my response when a much younger colleague asked what Derek and I had planned for the weekend.
“Oh, we’re going to Netflix and chill all weekend long. I can’t wait!” I replied.
He grinned.
“Good for you!” he said.
Then I remembered how I’d told the grocery store cashier the same thing. He paused in the midst of scanning my items, smiled and winked at me.
“Awesome,” he said.
I endured my friends’ good-natured ribbing for the rest of the party, but honestly, I hoped they were pulling my leg (definition: to make someone believe something that is not true as a joke, which I looked up to be sure that meaning hadn’t changed).
When they left, I turned to my trusted youngest son.
“Sam, what does ‘Netflix and chill’ mean?”
Peering at me, he cautiously replied. “What do you think it means?”
That’s how I knew my friends were telling the truth, and I was mortified all over again.
I hoped this was something only teenagers, young adults and their parents knew, but recently that hope was dashed.
When we met my friend Jill and her husband for dinner, the subject of my embarrassment came up again. (Honestly, I’ll be 70 before I live this down.)
To prove the phrase wasn’t known to merely the younger set, Jill asked our server, “Do you know what ‘Netflix and chill’ means?”
“Yes,” she replied. “And I only do that with my husband.”
Lesson learned. The next time someone asks what my plans are for the evening I will reply, “My husband and I are going to watch a movie via an online streaming service and relax.”
Or, because truthfulness is important to me, I might just smile and say, “We’re going to Netflix and chill.”
Cindy Hval 