I was unconcernedly whittling away the grimly grimpen-standard proceedings of homeroom, not hypothecating any attention whatever to the progress of the weekly announcements (in corroboration of the null hypothesis), but allowing my eyes to diffuse their focus such that the dull punctilio miraculously transformed into an awe-inspiring magic-lantern display; as I let the profuse variegation sail languorously past my lids, a curious pattern of squiggles slotted itself squarely, impinging itself unbefittingly in my verdant field. Duly displeased, I reluctantly dilated my vision and was met with a piercing pitch of palabric perplexitude, which, dear reader, though I seldom find myself in so terribly discomfiting a fix, yet it is exacerbated in its potency by my thereby tender soles: a novel word?…could it be, conceivably?…surely not? Yet there it was luridly blazoned in brazen defiance of my will. What does “twirps” mean? A dialectical rendition of twerp, or perhaps an onomatopoeia of a bird call (which in point of fact is the provenance of a surprising preponderance of avian appellations). 

The reader may well imagine my relief in the revelation that this was merely a sundry acronym, but another drop to the vat of alphabet soup, which I leave to be greedily gulped by New Dealers, logical positivists, and communists (the perceived overlap of those three is best left to the discretion of the reader), a more seemly moniker, I gather it was adjudicated by our august body of representatives, the ASB, than Sadie Hawkins, a half-crazed spinster spurned as unworthy of any suitors on account of her prodigious unprepossession (I think it fairly obvious why any girls in question would find such an eponymous aping as not altogether flattering), spelling out in extenso: The Woman Is Required to Pay. The perspicacious reader is no doubt perspiring already at the want of a perorint: what of the unexplained S. The iniquity of the crude circumvention of the “to”, whereas the just as if not more negligible “Is” is given top-de-trop billing could perhaps be meekly borne, but certainly the wholesale elision of one of the leading letters, such that it tautologically belies, could not possibly be brooked. 

I was in the midst of undamming Donny- when the clear and overpowering bromide’s slaver struck me dumb: “bien entendu, the apostrophe was but forgotten!” TWIRP‘s Dance may reflexively register to eyes blinkered by technocratic fabricants as an instance of syntactical error; to nudge the point to a cromulent alignment with the fovea, cf. the Seven Years’ War (which of course spanned some nine years); it could credibly be attested that this prescribed manner of courtship being so captivating in its practical ramifications on the, if we may treat it charitably, love lives of the constituents appurtenant (though the ostensible and actual effects compared may present of a saddle-bacchian anticlimax, mainly comprised in the converse distribution of the fermentation of the conceptions of notions of the actuation of the commencement of the pour-parlers ere the eventual launching of ballon d’essai to peradventure at some length ever and anon consider the consummation of vague yet nonetheless quixotic phantasms), and thus fixedly impressing itself upon the apprised, suffices as adducement for construing the levée (speaking of levies, viz., imposts, if you purchased your tickets this month, ladies, do ensure to inform your beau that you deliberately temporized, connoting your altruistic predilections in endowing the school in excess of that which accords itself with the procural of indulgences) as the theme’s ball.

But, alas, dear reader, my tongue a’ quiver is retarded by a dessication of the whiff of the spume of an ink droplet’s spit’s third cousin: no relict, no vestige, not the slightest hint of an accent to be found in the pendulous gossamer strands of the interwebs. Thus, the hypothesis, whatever my hypothecation of diligent exertion au contraire, is definitively contraïndicated. What is more, in the midst of my search, I was trenchantly lampooned with an unbeveled piece of the puzzle: the ASB had arranged a competition which they had appellated as ranking various submitted TWIRPS-Posal. Does it not strike the reader as squarely as it did me, as some opprobriously callous jest mocking the capacity of the viewer, for it cannot be comprehended that not one of the multifarious persons whom this proposal, if you will, slid past descried not the tangible infelicity of the ‘S’, in its interdiction in the crossfire of the scintillating amatory of the paritous ‘P’s in their yearning for amalgamation à la elision: the portmanteau “TWIRPosal”. Why, why would our venerable, stentorious alembic of the social will seek to embarrass us, to embarrass me in this ventricular violation; the S is less than useless, it is a palpable detriment to the gracility and grace of the moniker.

Listless, discomposed, lugubrious, my extremities, in my center’s languishing extremity, as of their own accord carried me to him who alone could balm my mind to rest, our ever cheerfully complaisant President (of whom I have been granted the liberty to address solely by his Christian name, the scampering lunary pup). In answer to my plaintive queries, he lenitously, if a tad abashedly (it is but natural to feel piquantly the defects of one’s own sensibility when faced corporeally with such unaffected poignancy in lamentation of rectitude smote), sought to rise to the solemn gravity of the moment. He said: “Yeah, I don’t think it stands for anything [woe to palabric pulchritude, to verbum’s novitiate, to my equilibrium!]. [As to the potential TWIRPosal:] That’s a better idea; how, with 32 people, could we not come up with that [I concur earnestly it this line of wonderment]…it’s probably too late to change it though.” The President, of all conversant personages, is wont to be faithfully informed of the viability of such entreaties, but qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur; I shall not, I cannot abandon this lofty crusade. 

Thence this unflinching resolution, the immutability of the acronym literatim presupposed, I have two proposals of my own (I will not balk at recompense for my strenuous moil should the following be nominated for contendance, and subsequently triumph, in the competition aforementioned) to humbly proffer forth, each enduing the S with meaning:

1. The S stands for simpliciter, connoting there is no recourse for the ladyfolk in their being saddled with the duty of treating the sex obscuro.
2. The S stands for suckas, connoting much the same

I await the ASB’s summons to be dealt my fate.