So the other night I was talking to my daughter on the telephone (why is it, when I hear or use the word telephone, I still think of the old rotary dial phones that were part of my youth?) and I asked her how school was going.  As a new freshman, she’s adapting well and loves school.

Anyway, she responded that she had “beasted” a test that morning.  I paused and then I asked her the obvious (to me, anyway) question, namely, is beasting a test a good thing or a bad thing?

I suppose it should have been obvious to me, but I didn’t know if “beasting” something meant that you place it in that particular category. I’m thinking of beasting, in this case, as being analogous to knighting.  Can’t you imagine a royal dance party in which the guests are introduced as they arrive, and the greeter introduces a nice looking couple as the Beast of Gloucestershire and his wife, or something like that.

The other thing that beasting could be is when you become the beast to whatever it is that you’re beasting.  “I beasted the quiz” might be a way of saying that I became like godzilla and marched into the center of that Quiz City and toppled all the tall buildings, destroying it.

So anyway, I asked the question as to whether beasting is good or bad, and she repeated the question for the benefit of those others who were in her nearby vicinity at that moment.  I heard raucous laughter in the background and then I was informed that her friends were laughing at me — correction, laughing with me — so I began to laugh too, to make sure that was true.

I think I kind of like the concept of beasting.  With Halloween so nearby, perhaps we should call it Monstering.  After all, verbing / verbizing has always been scary to me!