Adult novelties vs. frozen treats

I was pushing a cart through the grocery store this afternoon when it dawned on me that we use the same term for ice cream that we do for sex toys. Hanging over the last aisle of the grocery store is a placard that reads frozen novelties, and if you drive by any of the all-night porn emporiums across this great nation of ours you'll see that they sell adult movies and adult novelties. I only know from driving by of course.

Novelty is such a versatile word.

I think in the first instance the word denotes frozen treats that don't fall under the generic category of ice cream. Nutty Buddies, Eskimo Pies and rooty tooty bomb pops come to mind. In the case of adult novelties I'm thinking novelty is euphemistic for vibrator, inflatable partner and edible underwear. Come to think of it though rooty tooty bomb pop might fall under both categories as might edible underwear depending upon where your tastes lie. Please understand I'm not advocating any misuse of novelties, frozen, adult or otherwise, but what fellow shoppers do in the privacy of their home is none of my business.

When I say fellow shoppers I mean at the grocery store.

Napkin is another such word. For the most part it's something you wipe your face with, but this isn't the case with a sanitary napkin. You know, sanitary is also a word that you might think would only have one basic meaning, but actually has a couple. Sanitary napkins are in fact rather sanitary when they're in the box underneath the bathroom sink, but by the time they make it to the trash, they're anything but sanitary. Then they become unsanitary napkins. Adult novelties, if used correctly, also follow this same path of depurification.

What if toilet paper were referred to as adult wipes?

As a kid, I sometimes would bite the erasers off of pencils and chew on them. This was neither novel nor sanitary. When my grandmother saw me doing it one day she said, "Don't put your mouth on the rubber. It's nasty."

Isn't the English language a marvelous thing?