SOL and proud

Let me tell you about my coworker, a new and very earnest employee who wants to do his job perfectly. He's frequently stressed out, and can be heard at times dashing through the hallways muttering "I'm SOL."

Now is the time to point out that I have no idea what SOL means. But generally the things one says while scurrying around and awaiting one's doom are not chipper exclamations of joy. And I have indeed heard the term used in other contexts, mostly to refer to a person who is about to experience something unpleasant.

Now is also the time to point out, if you haven't already noticed, that "Slice of Life" could easily be abbreviated to "SOL." Many times during the March Slice of Life Story Challenge, I have been tempted to refer to it in just that way. However, considering how those letters are used by my coworker and friends, I've always decided to take the high road and not use them. I haven't bothered to try and find out what SOL means—It's a lot easier to just tack an "SC" onto the end of the acronym than to actually engage in research, so that's what I've been doing.

But since today begins the final week in the March SOLSC, I'm going to finally investigate its shorter cousin, the phrase "SOL."

The first Google result for "sol" — even before the Wikipedia entry about our sun! — is the Urban Dictionary definition, S.O.L. (seems like I've been getting a lot of my education on Urban Dictionary lately).

According to Urban Dictionary, I had been quite right in deducing that SOL was a phrase with negative connotations. And of course, as you might expect from anything you find in Urban Dictionary, it involves an expletive! What a relief I haven't been plastering such smut all over my blog!

For future reference, naïve Slicers such as myself, if you do choose to abbreviate the name of the challenge as SOL, people could interpret it to mean you're talking about being S*** out of Luck. So maybe you'll want to avoid that particular acronym. Or maybe you won't.

I, for one, am tired of having to avoid certain phrases just because they could be interpreted inappropriately! I think, just to be contrary, I'm going to use the short version of "Slice of Life" as often as I can!

I hope you enjoyed this SOL! Here's to one more week of SOL posts from the entire SOL community!