A Defining Word, by Ricky

People use words to communicate.  In spite of a few of my acquaintances whom never refer to me as a person, person of interest or disinterest, I use words to communicate.  It behooves all people to communicate accurately by using words whose meaning everyone understands.  Those of us who have (or still have at our senior age) a large vocabulary and can actually remember the words when we need them, hold a big advantage over those persons with a limited vocabulary – this category does not include young children whose minds are trans sponge and cis blackholes.  Any parent can testify to the reality of that fact.  Perhaps you can remember a time when you were small or when your young child accurately used or asked for the meaning of a “colorful” word while your mother was standing nearby – words like: shit, cock, fuck, bitch, son-of-a-bitch, gay, lesbian, homo, or pervert.  A child’s vocabulary expands very rapidly indeed.  Especially when following a child’s inquiry, the adult blurts out “Where the hell did you hear that word?”  The answer is nearly always, “From you Daddy.”  At this point, you get a very very stern look from your mother who is still standing nearby.  (Add “hell” to the previous word list.)  By the way, does anyone know why little children seem to delight in saying those words at the most embarrassing time, place, and circumstance?

While growing up from age 10 forward, I spent many hours of my summer vacation from school reading for recreation to pass the time I consumed babysitting my twin brother and sister.  I had many opportunities to interrogate a dictionary to obtain the meaning of a word, if I could not deduce its meaning from the context of the usage.

If I didn’t know how to spell a word in elementary school, my teachers would always tell me to look it up in the dictionary.  I always retorted, “How can I look it up if I don’t know how to spell it?”  I finally quit asking and just tried to figure out a way to write my assignment without using that particular word.

At one time I was a good speller.  I never won the class spelling bee but I was often 2^nd.  When I graduated high school, my ability to spell began to fade away.  Now I depend on my computer’s ability to know what I am trying to communicate and to spell all the words correctly and place them into proper grammatical position.  I’ve discovered that usually the computer and I are both week in the grammar area.

Communicating by pronouncing words correctly (making allowances for regional dialects and not writing a homonym for the correct word) is equally important for presenting a positive image to others along with having your message correctly understood.  Perhaps you can remember President George W. Bush’s mangling of English (some may call it misspeaking or misquoting).  “Dubya” attended some prestigious schools:  Harvard Business School, Yale University, The Kinkaid School, Phillips Academy, and Yale College.  Yet his mangling (there I said it again) of the language does not reflect well on those institutions or upon the Texas education system, which already has major problems of its own.  It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) it does not reflect well upon him either.

Words are used to label things and people.  However, labels do not define a thing.  Poorly paraphrasing Shakespeare, labeling a rose a skunk, does not accurately call to mind its sweet smell.  Placing a label on a person does not accurately define who or what that person is like and the danger of mislabeling someone is all too great.  People are too complex to be categorized by a label.  Humans are more than just words.

I am tired of writing on this topic so here is the defining word of the day, “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”.  If you don’t know what it means, look it up in a dictionary or just watch Disney’s “Mary Poppins”.

© 22 Feb 2016 

About the Author 

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is: TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com