I’m Christian Lander from Stuff White People Like.  I’ve made a career – well, let’s call it a more of a fleeting moment of cultural relevance – of making broad, occasionally accurate observations about people. So when I was given the chance to help the Ford Flex team create the Suburban Dictionary, I jumped at the opportunity.

The Suburban Dictionary is the definitive source for terms that describe the moments and things that only seem to become part of your life after you hit the other side of thirty and ditch the city for suburban life. With your help, we want to create something unique and fun, which somewhat embodies the Ford Flex.

Flex isn’t everyman’s vehicle; it’s the choice for that unique fun person who wants to drive comfortably and effortlessly, while standing out from the pack. It’s the vehicle that takes you away from suburbia, while in suburbia.

At the heart of the project is gentle poking fun of a generation that never expected to get older.  But while we all lament our bodies not bouncing back from a night out or a carb-laden dinner, we’re also finding out that the aging process isn’t all bad.  When I was twenty two, I used to lay on my futon thinking that nothing would be worse than having to live in the suburbs. Now that I’m thirty three, I can’t think of anything worse than having to sleep on a futon.

I’ve helped plant the seed for this project by writing a few definitions, but our goal was to have you contribute a few definitions of your own.  The experience of living in the suburbs varies greatly from city to city, so we want to have—wait, no that doesn’t sound right.  In any case, it’s been our hope that you will take some of your experiences and contribute them to this project in an effort to find a little common ground with your neighbors.

We even decided to shoot a short video to help bring some of these terms to life.  Take a look, get on Facebook, and have some fun with all of it.

At the Suburban Dictionary, our goal has always been to make you laugh, or at least chuckle at collective experiences we all share as we stare down the barrel of middle age, and hopefully let us all laugh at our collective descent into un-coolness.

Check out this video to what we mean.

If you liked this one, there are more on the Ford Flex YouTube channel.

Christian Lander is the creator of the website Stuff White People Like. He is a Ph.D. dropout who was the 2006 public speaking instructor of the year at Indiana University. He has lived in Toronto, Montreal, Copenhagen, Tucson and Indiana, and he now Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, Jess, a photographer who contributed many of the photos in the book.