One of the interesting parts of being on Facebook and having over 1000 contacts is noticing trends. Not the kinds of trends Facebook tracks - who's talking about Miley Cyrus this hour, for instance - but the kinds my subconsciousness tracks.
Often they are things that likely happen all the time but the level of critical consciousness doesn't raise until I know what something is. For instance, I never knew there was a part of the body called the meniscus until a close friend tore hers, then, all of a sudden, a few friends were having surgery on theirs. Is that coincidence? Not likely, nor even a trend. But perhaps I just didn't notice it before because people weren't using that word (most just say "knee problems") or I didn't recognize it and so it didn't register for me.
But here's a word I know well, linguistically and personally:
death.
