ABC to RIP: Your Life in TLAs (three letter acronyms)
In the first chapter of his fun and informative book, The Body: a Guide for Occupants, author Bill Bryson calculates how much it would cost to assemble all the elements necessary to build a human being (specifically, the actor Benedict Cumberbatch, for reasons I won’t go into here):
…fifty-nine elements are needed to construct a human being. Six of these—carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus—account for 99.1 percent of what makes us…Who would have thought that we would be incomplete without some molybdenum inside us, or vanadium, manganese, tin, and copper?
The biggest component in any human, filling 61 percent of available space, is oxygen…All your oxygen will set you back just $14 and your hydrogen a little over $26…But after that it gets pretty expensive.
You need about thirty pounds of carbon, and that will cost you $69,550…Calcium, phosphorus, and potassium, though needed in much smaller amounts, would between them set you back a further $73,800. Altogether…the full cost of building a new human being…would be a very precise $151,578.46.
…the most astounding thing about us (is) that we are just a collection of inert components, the same stuff you would find in a pile of dirt.
That’s one way of looking at it. There are other ways - or contexts - for distilling our lives down to their base elements. For instance, all the three letter acronyms that emerge at key phases of our life, from roughly the age of two to the very end, even beyond (the loose ends that are NYP - not your problem). There are many two and four letter acronyms that also come up (ASAP, TGIF, YOLO, FOMO, FAFO, STFU), but the overwhelming number of life-defining acronyms come in threes. Why that is we don’t know and to conjecture is beyond the scope of this piece.
By no means complete, HTA (here they are), beginning with a foundational set that remains consistent past the age of 12 :
WTF/GFY (Go Fuck Yourself)
SMH (Shaking My Head).
SOS (Same Old Shit)
SOL (Shit Out of Luck)
FYI/TMI
LOL/OMG
NFW (No Fucking Way)
NMP (Not My Problem)
TFW (the Feeling When)
TFY: the Formative Years: 0-12
DNA
ABCs (still technically 3, “s” is the equivalent of a silent number)
PBS (shorthand for Sesame Street, etc.)
ADD/OCD (when this commonly first presents)
PTC (parent-teacher conference)
COA: Coming of Age/Adolescence: 13-18
SAT/ACT
GPA
THC
ATM (gateway drug to your first CC)
BFF (your “starter” relationships)
DMV
IDK (I Don’t Know)
IDC (I Don’t Care)
FEO (Fixed Orthodontic Appliances, aka, braces - not a commonly used or known acronym, consider it a stand-in for all the non-routine dental procedures that mark our journey through life.)
THY: The Hustle Years/Young Adulthood: 18-30
GED/MBA/BFA/DDS/ PhD, etc.
FWB (friends with benefits)
STD
HIV
APR
CPP (Credit Card Points)
EC: Early Career: 30-40
ROI
NDA
CYA
EOB
WFH
401(k)
529 (numbers, obviously, but it checks enough boxes to warrant inclusion)
HMO/PPO
MIL (Mother-in-Law)
ARM (Adjustable Rate Mortgage)
IVF
OTC
Midlife: 40-60
CBD
HDL/LDL
PSA
EKG
IBS
MRI
IPO
PTO
HOA
SIL/DIL (Son/Daughter-in-Law)
IRS
TGY: The Golden Years: 60+
Includes all of the elements from the previous two categories, plus these:
RMD (Required Minimum Distributions from retirement accounts)
COL (Cost of Living)
RPC (Rewards Points Calculator for Amex customers)
UTI
EEG (to monitor brain health for seizures and/or cognitive decline)
NMP (Not My Problem becomes a dominant theme)
EOY: End of Life
LTC (Long-Term Care)
POA (Power of Attorney)
DNR (Do Not Resuscitate)
DOA
RIP
IRS (aka, NYP - Not Your Problem)
TL;DR (too long, didn’t read)
Sorry, too late. It’s also two characters too many. Last thing I’d add is that YMMV (your mileage may vary) - also one letter too many, which proves there’s always an ETR (exception to the rule), with the exception of DnT (Death ‘n Taxes), the GOAT of all TLAs.