Giving Birth to Shine Dropular

Sometimes I have problems with words. It’s not so much the words themselves that cause me grief, but the fact that certain phrases become almost intrusive, aggressively butting into my consciousness at the most inappropriate of times. Or even more disturbing, in my hour of need, the right words, the truest specimens of that magic moment where vowels and consonants converge, desert me. They leave me cold, lonely, and – the greatest of all possible evils – inarticulate.

Take, for example, my current ghostwriting project. I’m revising a book written for pregnant women. This particular book is aimed toward women who haven’t been pregnant before and therefore don’t quite know what to expect. The book is conveniently broken into three parts corresponding to the three trimesters of pregnancy, each part offering relevant information for that particular period. As I’m the one responsible for restructuring the book along such a timeline, it was up to me to come up with appropriate subtitles for each part.

The first trimester wasn’t hard.

First Trimester:
“The Adventure Begins”

It seemed to work – it’s simple enough, and yet has that boisterous, exotic appeal. It’s an adventure! And it’s beginning! Isn’t that enough to excite most newly minted pregnant women?

The second trimester subtitle proved a little trickier. I tinkered around with several options.

“The Next Step”

“The Adventure Unfolds”

“The Journey Continues”

It was starting to sound like a sequel to some poorly acted B-movie, so I dropped the Pilgrim’s Progress metaphor and went with a little literary pizzazz instead.

Second Trimester:
“The Growing Glow”

When in doubt, pair alliteration and assonance. Corny? Decidedly. At least it’s better than “The Bumping Hump.”

But it’s the blasted third trimester that has plagued me with the most worrisome quandaries. It’s the third subtitle, so of course it must naturally exceed the other two in wit and sparkle. But how do you sum up the last trimester of a pregnancy? For some reason, these aphorisms keep popping into my head:

“The End is in Sight”

“Your Final Days”

“The Beginning of the End”

“The Last Leg”

“The End is Near”

It suddenly occurred to me that none of these really correspond to the third trimester of pregnancy at all. On the contrary, they correspond to precisely two situations: either someone is dying, or the second coming of christ is at hand. No matter how I cast it, the third trimester subtitle sounds like something scrawled on a sign predicting the Apocalypse. Somehow, “The End is Near” doesn’t bode well for women about to have their first child.

I toyed with other ideas.

“Climax is Nigh”?

Too sexual.

“The Denouement”?

Too esoteric.

“Wrapping It Up”?

Possibly irreverent.

“Tying It Up”?

I like the allusion to the umbilical cord – it might as well be “Tying It Up, Cutting It Off” – but it doesn’t quite have that loving touch.

I am open to suggestions. As a word person, I hate not being able to find the right ones.

All this talk of words reminds me: during a recent haircut, I was delighted to discover that a word I once thought was obsolete still exists actively and happily in the vernacular.

I’ll set the scene.

The haircut was over, and the young girl was putting the finishing touches on the blow dry. She reached over for a fingerful of some gobby stuff and started applying it energetically to my hair.

“What’s that?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Oh, it’s Shine Drops,” she said eagerly.



“Shine Drops? Never heard of them,” I said, my complete cluelessness about all-things-hair shining through.

“They’re great,” she said, smiling. “They make your hair so light and shiny! I don’t know if you use any product” … to which I shook my head … “but if you used any, I’d pick Shine Drops.”

And then, without a trace of sarcasm, she added, “All the popular people like them.”

I must have grinned for half an hour. How fabulous. I thought the word “popular” died out in high school. But thank god, there are still popular people, and they’re out there somewhere using Shine Drops.

New idea for the third trimester:

“Shine Drops Make You Popular!

And good luck giving birth.”