Try using compound one-word verbs. They prove your point, providing evidence that dependency is not totally wrong and that’s an argument you can’t ignore; two words binding tightly by an unbreakable bond, almost asphyxiating, to make sense. Not even a period in-between. Hyphenation isn’t a problem, as long as they count as one word by all word count applications.

Twelve is a hard age. At twelve you might equally make trouble by stealing a second helping of sugary cereal from the Shabbat morning breakfast buffet or by masturbating in your sleeping bag as your unsuspecting camp counselor leads a guided meditation. Jacob, the worst 12 year old I’ve ever known, showed me this during a three-week session at Camp Watahooga. “Hey bud, it’s not fair if you get more lucky charms when no one else does,” I told Jacob in the morning, and then later, “hey Bud, like we said before, you need to go to the all-gender single-use bathroom if you want to masturbate”–all this in the course of one terribly unrestful shabbat.

Dear Dr. Brinkman:

Thank you for your submission of
2357.3 to the Galactic Art Fair, which I have reviewed with great diligence. Before we can proceed I must share a few observations.

Blaise Frick-Durant was a nineteenth century French author, whose defining personal and professional attribute was that he only had half a nose. The other half had been severed off by the rogue boning knife he had launched into the air during an ill-advised knife trick demonstration in the company of the young female he had invited to his chambers and whom he, as written in his diary, hoped to “keep warm in the folds of my culottes.”

I was a doctor. One day I was visiting a friend’s lab to pick up some medicine when this guy wearing a deerstalker just abruptly walked up to me, magnifying glass tucked in his pocket. “Ah, so you’re the very fellow who’s looking for a roommate, eh? Obviously your name is Jack Duflack and you clearly fought in the Caribbean before turning into a professional sun tanner on the beach—am I wrong?” he said with a knowing wink.