Monday, September 12, 2011

Parsing a Sentence Overheard on the Bus

The sentence:

We’re kind of like bff’s a little bit.

The speaker:

A college student on a “crazy lesbian” she knows.

Now parse:

First get inside the prepositional object, which here serves as a sort of nucleus, the first b (best) and second f (forever) both such superlative qualifiers, one referring to the highest possible quality, the other to the vastest amount of time. Now unpack them both and send them sprawling out into perfection, only to hit those two mediocre, tempering walls: kind of like and a little bit. You now hold in your hand, like an eggshell with its guts blown out, the brittlest sort of f, which stands for friend.

In essence:

We’re friends(?).

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