via Daily Prompt: Original

Hhm, his work is just so… original!

The new album’s pretty good, but I prefer their early stuff. It was much more original.

He’s fantastic, a true original!

Original: the word for when you like something and know that it’s not slightly left of centre, but can’t quite explain how.

Only, when I was young, I didn’t consider it such a positive word. To me it was boring and banal, synonymous with ordinary, plain, common, everyday. Because of course, I was being influenced by so many different snacks with ORIGINAL FLAVOUR on their packaging. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want original flavour of anything! When you could get something like bacon, barbeque, salt & vinegar, sour cream & onion, why would you want plain old original flavour!?

As I got older I began to understand the other meanings of the word, but I was always suspicious of it meaning inventive, innovative, or novel. My brain just couldn’t square that with something like the inoffensive and unexciting original flavour Pringles, for example.

Of course now that I’m older and wiser and understand the meandering complexities of English a little better, my tastes have mellowed, and I’m now much more likely to choose original flavour over whatever overpowering concoction the marketeers have dreamt up. In that, I think, I’m no true original.