Week 4: Buoyancy

Buoyancy. Seems to just roll of the tongue, doesn’t it? Try saying the word without smiling. See? The word just strikes me as a happy, friendly, and welcoming word. Buoyancy wants to be your friend; you just got to let him. It’s a comfort word for me; it tells me that I’m not in trouble and that I’m afloat without a worry in sight. Just imagining the word buoyancy places me on a small sail boat in the middle of the ocean as the sun sets. Buoyancy used to be an enemy of mine when I joined swim team as a freshman in high school simply because I couldn’t sustain buoyancy. But after a few months of practice, I got to know buoyancy and the word didn’t turn out so bad after all. The word reminds me of the canoeing merit badge during which we had to ‘swamp’ our boat, meaning let it fill with water thus rendering it useless. I truly came to appreciate buoyancy after wading in that frigid water for what seemed like eons. When buoyancy had been restored, it was like Christmas morning. One of the great characteristics of the word buoyancy is it’s always used in a positive context. Nobody complains about being buoyant; we like being on top of water. The word offers peace to the soul. If buoyancy had a smell, it would smell like water because it always hangs out and is used in context with water. The texture would be rough, but not too rough. Kind of like an unaggressive sandpaper. Why? Because the word buoyancy is on top of the water all day soaking up the sun’s rays without any sort of UV protection, so it’s only natural the feel of buoyancy has become rough and dry. The word’s weight would be heavy, which may seem counterintuitive because it can be inferred that the word buoyancy would in fact be buoyant. But this has nothing to do with whether or not buoyancy is buoyant, for you see while it may heavy, its density still allows buoyancy to live up to its name. Buoyancy: the Justin Timberlake of words.