Andy Young: Improving vocabulary, inchmeal

By Andy Young

It’s a good thing I was born when schoolchildren were actually required to know how to spell. It’s tougher for youngsters to pick up that ability these days, given "autocorrect" features on electronic devices which remove potentially discommoding composition errors automatically. Young people who spell (and hear) phonetically might assume a shofar was the driver of a fancy limousine. However, a shofar is actually a ram’s horn that’s blown like a trumpet during Rosh Hashanah, and also at the end of Yom Kippur. A shofar is only for special occasions, though. No decent shammash would blow into one during the reading of the weekly parashah, that’s for sure.

I would dearly love to be orgulous about the state of my home. However, like many people of my vintage (those who are coeval to myself), my desultory attempts to downsize by divesting myself of items that I no longer need are almost never effective. I’d like to festinate the obviation of my home’s clutter, but the reality is that I’ll probably have to offcast things inchmeal if I wish to rid my living space of its untidiness.

However, there’s a potentially unexcogitable problem: my parents, like many of their generation, never threw out anything that might someday prove useful. Think empty bottles, plastic containers, sheets of stationary, screws, nuts, bolts, black tape, electrical wire, half-empty bags of concrete, paint cans that might or might not have had paint left in them, and anything else even remotely related to potential home construction (or destruction) projects. I’m guessing this particular trait is heritable, since I too hesitate to discard anything that might someday be of service.

There’s really no way of knowing when some quotidian object that's been doing nothing other than taking up space for decades will come in handy. It’s occurred to me that perhaps the most proficient way to divest myself of all this excess would be to hold a potlatch, which as I recently discovered, is a gift-giving ceremony practiced by indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest. However, there is a shameful dearth of Pacific Northwestern indigenous people in my neighborhood, so that idea is out.

One morning last weekend I awoke shrouded by an unmistakable hebetude but snapped out of it when I realized how fortunate I was to be living above the hadal part of the ocean. My eyes would be utterly useless there, since these areas are located 20,000 or more feet below sea level, and thus are extremely dark. I’ll bet all the ichthyofauna down there are blind.

After a couple of hours of going through my closet I began feeling insatiate, so naturally I began having prandial ideations. When I become esurient my thoughts turn to all kinds of comestibles, like panettone, muffuletta, and even skyr. I’d balk at muktuk, though, and be particularly wary of quenelle and/or yakitori. After all, inadequately prepared victuals can lead to trichinosis or other zoonoses that are a lot worse than mere dyspepsia. And were I to contract one or more of those contagions, it’s possible the sequela that followed would be worse than the disease itself.

Poetry-writing bagpipe players needing a rhyme for squirrel other than curl or earl could turn to skirl, which means to play the bagpipes. I wonder if there was ever a rural girl squirrel who could swirl, twirl, and skirl simultaneously? If I tried to do that I’d probably hurl.

The bottom line: I accomplished almost nothing during my latest attempt at downsizing. But I’m justifiably orgulous over having saved that 2013 “Word-a-day” desk calendar. I knew I’d find a use for it! <