On Slang, Color, and the Electric Missing Piece
One day before turning 48, I lost a plug.
Not the metaphorical kind — the actual adapter from my EV charging cable. Just gone. Yanked? Lifted? Vanished? Who knows. All I know is, when I returned from dropping off Nadia at school and needed a quick charge, that essential chunk of kit was missing from the public end of the cable. Not the part that clicks into the EQB — the other end, the wall plug, the pole socket, the umbilical to the city grid. Just… not there.
Cue the half-hearted scavenger hunt through the trunk. That’s when I discovered my cable kit includes a box of trickery: all sorts of adapters, even one that looks like it could squeeze into a regular wall outlet. Not sure I’d risk trying that one. Could be useful. Could be €120 down the drain and a scorched garage wall.
But it made me think — is this even theft? Can someone remove a cable while it’s in use? Shouldn’t I have noticed when unplugging? Is it my fault for having a flexible charging setup? Or is this just another entry in the Book of Modern Mysteries: Chapter 7, “The Curious Case of the Missing Connector”?
From Bedroom Lofts to Emotional Chemistry
Meanwhile, back at the IKEA dojo, we’d just finished Nadia’s new bedroom upgrade. A loft bed — the kind of sleeping pod that requires climbing skills and parental patience. Two days of labor, screws, and spatial reasoning. Two beers deserved, minimum.
So when she finally climbed in on Sunday night — her first night in the new bed — she turned to me with wide eyes and whispered, “Daddy… I’m scared.”
And then she delivered the line that stuck:
“I want my old bed back.”
Now, that old bed had been dismantled, sacrificed to the altar of progress. But more importantly, this was a moment. A chance to teach her what I’m still learning myself: “What you’re feeling right now — that buzz in your belly, the flutter in your chest — that’s not just fear. That’s excitement. It’s the same feeling. Same body. Same chemicals. Your brain just hasn’t labeled it yet.”
Excitement and fear are emotional twins separated only by mindset. Same sensation, different story.
And as I was trying to explain this, I tripped over the limits of language. In English, “excited” can carry both meanings: thrilled or terrified. Interestingly, the Dutch word we often use in our household — spannend — works in a similar way. It captures both the thrill of anticipation and the unease of nervousness, depending on how you frame it.
Which, in hindsight, made it the perfect word for that moment. It didn’t need translation — just recognition.
Gen Alpha, Jungle Greens, and Seeing What We Can Name
Later that day, I watched a clip of Professor Xiaoma — a man who gave his graduation speech entirely in Gen Alpha slang. The crowd, initially zoned out, came alive. Why? Because he spoke their language. Not the formal one — the coded one. Gaming slang. Meme dialect. Digital DNA.
I could follow more than I expected, probably thanks to years of decoding my sons’ teenage banter. Terms like “OP,” “nerf,” “buff,” “AFK” — they’re as much part of their vocabulary as “hello.” It struck me again how language isn’t just for expressing thought. It shapes it.
Which brought me back to a theory I saw in a Why Files episode. The one about how ancient cultures — the Greeks, supposedly — had no word for “blue.” And maybe didn’t even see it the way we do.
In one experiment, a tribal group with many words for different greens could spot a slightly different green shade instantly. But show them a field of blues with one off-color, and they froze. Just like we freeze when looking at a sea of jungle greens.
We see what we can name. And sometimes we miss what we haven’t labeled.
On Blind Eyes and Other Ways of Focusing
This morning, Nadia surprised me again — as 7-year-olds do.
“Daddy, why do some blind people’s eyes move funny when they’re not wearing sunglasses?”
I tried to explain: their eye muscles aren’t trained to focus on what they can’t see. No visual anchor, no fixed gaze. But her question stuck with me. Can you focus without seeing? Can you direct your attention with your ears? Your mind? Your fingertips brushing along a surface you can’t name yet — and maybe can’t even perceive, because your language never told you it was there? Can you train your other senses by intentionally “going blind” for a day?
Is the mind a budget — less visual data, more audio power? Or is it a muscle system — where deliberate training can unlock superpowers, even if you haven’t lost a sense?
It’s got me wondering what we might be missing simply because we never tried not to see.
From Missing Pieces to Unseen Patterns
Whether it’s a lost EV adapter or a lost word, I’m noticing a theme:
We don’t panic when something breaks.
We panic when something goes missing — silently, unnoticed.
The adapter was gone and I didn’t see it happen.
The word for that emotional crossover didn’t exist — until I remembered spannend did the job all along.
The shade of green wasn’t spotted because my brain had no name for it.
And maybe that’s what turning 48 is really about.
Not just finishing loops.
But noticing the invisible ones you’ve been riding all along.
The patterns you only see when you lose something.
The stories you can only tell once you give your unnamed feelings a name.
What's on your mind?