An Omen?

Or two, or three? 

You bet!

I had an off day yesterday. No … I don’t mean because this is Spring Break and I was off work. I mean that I was mentally and physically off kilter. (What does 'kilter' really mean? I feel a Toad Moment coming on.) So this morning and on my morning constitutional I vowed that I would take my own advice, keep my senses open, and look for a moment. Because it was early and the sun was just burning through the morning fog, I decided to concentrate on watching for and listening to birds.

As I turned the corner by my brother’s house I stopped dead in my tracks – there were a pair of ducks, mallards to be precise, standing on the sidewalk in front of me. Now we don’t live in one of the neighborhoods where there are lakes, or ponds, or even a river. Oh, I think a few neighbors have swimming pools and there are a few hippie hot tubs around, but no open bodies of water. We have lived in this same neighborhood for almost 37 years and I have never seen a duck taking a walk down our sidewalk. So . . . seeing a pair of ducks did surprise me a bit. It also brought a big smile to my face.

You see, there are three animals that always cause me to stop, smile, and just plain mellow out  — ducks, toads, and beagles. Why? Well, that is another story. I will say that my nickname (thanks to a high school friend) is Duckman but that, too, is another story.

So…I stood and watched the ducks until they finally realized that they were in a cheap neighborhood that didn’t have a pond or a lake and they flew away. I walked another half block and when I turned the next corner, a dove walked out in front of me from under the neighbor’s rosemary plant. A great plant — I always swipe my hands through it when I am out for my walks. Now, I am not over the top about doves like I am about ducks but they are fun to watch and to listen to when they mourn.

So I am now feeling pretty good about seeing a few of nature’s creatures when I turn the corner again, and out of a neighbor’s lavender plant (yep, I run my hands through it, also) hop two little bunnies. Again, keep in mind that this is southern California and not central Illinois. In Illinois there always seem to be a dozen or more rabbits (notice I didn’t call them bunnies) eating my tulips. We don’t have bunnies in this simple tract neighborhood. The bunnies just sat there. Since this is Easter week, I started to really wonder.

So ... in my mind these were definitely omens and have already brought me pleasure. I cut my exercise short by thirty minutes in order to get home and write this all down. And … No! None of these were pookas. But they all provided a Moment!

My Drug Abuse

This morning at the communal water cauldron, a holier-than-thou co-worker went off about how South American third-world countries are corrupting American society. According to him, these countries have purposely introduced a plethora of drugs into the good old U. S. of A. These drugs have pushed our society into a death spiral to the point that we, too, will soon be a third-world country. He didn’t say it but he strongly implied that when we hit bottom it will be with the aid and direction of the pinko leftists.

I don’t like arguments so I kept my mouth shut. Besides, I have been using a South American exported drug for many years. Yes, this habit has cost me money and occasionally has clouded my judgment and affected my health. I guess I have always had a craving but the wise council of my parents kept me pretty clean. Once I graduated from college, moved to California, and had a steady income, I increased my intake.

I found a local source that was within walking distance of my office near the beach. My wife, who is also addicted, and I ultimately became close friends with our source. A good thing too - I remember late one Saturday night, after going out to an Italian dinner, we both desperately needed a fix but our cache was empty. In fact, our backup cache was empty so we panicked. We called our source who said she had some at her house and if we dropped by she would fix us up. We beat a path to her door, took possession of a bag of the goods, and sat in the car and used it before even driving the few blocks back home. Yes, we were in a bad way.

We have tried on a number of occasions to stop cold turkey but to no avail. When we were raising our children, we worked at keeping the stuff out of the house. All kinds of youthful problems have been associated with this drug. We ultimately found that one of our daughters was a friend of our source’s son. He would sneak bags of the stuff to school in his back pack and share it with our daughter at lunch. Needless to say, we did not report this to the authorities; no telling where it would lead.

As we have gotten older our tastes have become more refined and, unfortunately, we are now addicted to the expensive, more highly concentrated stuff. Fortunately, our friend is still in business and supplies a high-end product in half-kilo bags. We keep it at home in the buffet next to the cooking sherry. My wife uses it in brownies, but, you know, after the first brownie you get the munchies and can’t stop eating.

In recent years there have been lots of articles written on its medicinal value. I am not sure of the veracity of that research. One wonders if it is just an excuse to justify the bad habits and addictions of the authors. If all of the articles are true, then I will live a long time and prosper. My blood pressure will be lower, my cholesterol will be lower, my hormones will be better balanced, and my body will be protected from aging. I certainly know that my wife is a lot happier when the stuff is available.

If America does fall as a result of this drug we cannot blame the source but should look to one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, an early addict, who said:

"The superiority of chocolate, both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain."

And don’t get me started on coffee.

Moments - A Cogitation

The other night my wife and I saw Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. The main punch line of the play is when the newly dead Emily says to the Stage Manager, "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?" The Stage Manager replies, “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”

I don’t agree with the Stage Manager’s response. I think we all “do some.” The “some” that we do are called “moments.”

Life is all about moments and the stories that come from them. Sometimes they are humorous. Sometimes they are sad. Sometimes they are romantic. Sometimes a moment is so private that you can’t tell the story publicly but you still have the the memory and the story.

I collect moments like some people collect coins or books.  I am always on the lookout for a good one. Moments are clearly important for everyone.  Did you ever think about all of the songs that speak of moments:

This Magic Moment – The Drifters

Moments to Remember – The Four Lads

Magic, Moments - Perry Como

It Only Takes a Moment – Hello Dolly

One of the things that make us human is that we tell stories. Moments lead to stories.  Without a moment you have no stories. 

We all have some moments. Some are obvious like our first date, our first kiss, losing our virginity, our wedding, the birth of a child, seeing the Grand Canyon or Chartes Cathedral for the first time, or seeing your first pileated woodpecker. To make life exciting you need to make yourself available to experiences. Open your senses… your eyes, your ears, your nose. But most of all get out there and look for moments.

Photography helped me learn to see, allowing me up to gather more moments. Even when I don’t have a camera with me I am constantly looking for a picture. Be careful – you don’t want to look like a scanning radar – but do keep yourself alert to opportunities. Sunsets, sunrises, rainbows are common but with the right person or at the right time they become a moment.  To me, full moons are always a moment. However, I remember only a few of these – a lunar eclipse, the moon over the Eiffel Tower with my arm around my wife, a swooping owl.

Moments are not just opportunities of the senses. Sometimes being in the right place at the right (or wrong) time is what causes the memory. My being in the air at 6:00 am on September 11, 2001, was not a lot of fun, but I do have a story to tell.

We all know that music and scent can bring us back to a moment. The first line of the first story I ever wrote was, “I remember it as a summer of The Graduate, “Cherish”, and Windsong” … three sensations that brought back a moment.

So, fellow Boomers, what do you remember when you hear the line, “Hello darkness my old friend,” or “I can’t get no satisfaction,” or “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away?” Or… do you remember who you were with the first time you heard Vic Flick’s guitar riff Dum-Di-Di-Dum-Dum…  (Yes, the James Bond Theme)?

Rarely does TV provide a memorable moment but one that jumps out at me was watching Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald in real time. And a few years later we watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.

So, we all need to be alert and looking for moments. When we find a good moment, we want to make sure that it has a lot of momentum. I am absolutely sure that my children are tired of hearing about some of my momentous moments. But, that’s OK; I have a granddaughter to tell my stories to now.

And since I argued with Thornton Wilder at the beginning, I think it only fair that I let him close. 

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”

A Dogged Moment

Over the past month several of my friends and colleagues have commented that The Toad and Dogged Dialogues have both been quiet recently. I checked and it has been well over a year since I posted anything. There are a lot of reasons for that but I suspect that at the top of the list are my sloth and ennui. In defense, however, I have started writing several poems, essays, and Toad’s Words but, well, acedia always took control and my muse would run away.

To solve the problem of never finishing anything I start, I decided to create Dogged Moments. These will be very short dialogues based on some of the weird thoughts and musings that occasionally blow the windmills of my mind and then dog me for the rest of the day.

Dogged Moment #1 - Dashboards

While I was peeling my grapefruit this morning and waiting for my morning thunder tea to brew, I found myself singing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.  Don’t we all sing tunes from Oklahoma while fixing breakfast?

You can pretty well find anything in their lyrics to inspire you: “Oh what a beautiful morning,” “They’ve gone about as fur as they can go,” “I cain’t say no,” “It’s a scandal. It’s an outrage,” “Don’t start collecting things.” Although it is my wife who usually sings this last one to me. And my favorite, “It's summer and we're runnin' out a' ice.”

Anyway, if The Surrey with the Fringe on Top is good enough for Marlene Dietrich to sing and Miles Davis to play, then I can sing it in my kitchen.

Well, I got to the line which I have heard and sung a million times, “The dashboard’s genuine leather”, and it suddenly hit me that we were talking about a surrey here. That begs the questions: Why do both cars and surreys have dashboards? And, why is it called a dashboard?

The answer is simple. Surreys, wagons, sleighs, and carriages were pulled by horses and when horses run fast, or “dash”, they tend to throw clumps of mud, crud, and other, even less delightful stuff, off their hooves.  Hence these modes of transportation put boards in front of the driver and passengers to keep the mud from hitting them.

So why do they call them “dashboards” in cars? Keep in mind that early cars were called carriages or horseless carriages so it made sense to name the board holding the knobs, gauges, and controls after what everyone was already calling it, the “dashboard.”

The truly interesting thing is that now we also call computer displays that show us real-time data like weather, time, stock prices, and news, “dashboards” … clearly a misnomer. These modern day dashboards don’t protect us from the crud the news and stock market throw at us.

Bulwer-Lytton Would Be Proud!

So, thanks to a discerning but gentle reader of my blog, I was reminded that a few years back I actually won “runner-up” (is a runner-up a winner?) twice in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. So for completeness of this blog, I present you with those two sentences plus one more.

Hiram had been a three-toed dragon, well on his way to a promotion to Imperial five-toed dragon, when he accidentally choked on the pink chiffon scarf of Princess Chloe's hat, and his coughing set the new oaken parapet, on the old stone bulwark, ablaze, thereby earning a demotion to Troll 3 – now his only responsibility was to keep Billy goats off the bridge.

Runner-up in the Fantasy Fiction category of the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2007win.html

 The Jones family held their annual family reunion on Easter going through over six dozen spiral-cut, hickory-smoked hams and several bottles of a fine Australian shiraz, before Farmer Jones, the head of the family, took the leavings back to Manor Farm to slop Napoleon and his other champion hogs, but the seventy-six ham bones fed the pig's tirade.

Runner-up in the Vile Puns Category of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2008win.html

I also won honorable mention in the Worst First Sentence Contest at the 2007 Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference. That honorable sentence was:

Dimitri was ready with bells on – he was actually wearing tweed, but his personality was bright, shiny, and tinkly as if it was laden with bells; not the standard cow bell variety, those are low and dull, but more like the Russian troika sort that kids everywhere relate to the coming of St. Nick – for tonight he would put the ram in the rama lama ding dong.

The art is by George Almond.

The Toad’s Words - Excursus #24

For this Excursus of the Toad, I have decided to explore some F-words. Now, calm down. It’s not what you think; this is a family (an F-word, by the way) set of excursuses. You see, I was reading an article the other day and the author used flout and flaunt in the same sentence and I thought, “I am not sure if I know what the flip flout means.” So, I looked it up and it said, “often confused with flaunt.” Now, if that is not an invitation to an excursus then I don’t know what is. So, without further ado, we proceed.

Flout, verb

Pronounced flout (yep, even the dictionaries say that flout is pronounced flout. Useful, don’t you think?) Pronounce it out with an fl in front of it.

To treat with scorn or to mock. To show contempt. To scoff.

Flout, the noun means a contemptuous mocking speech or action.

The word seems to originate from the Middle English word flouten, to play the flute. While none of my dictionaries or etymologies will go out on a limb and say this, they seem to imply that the flute was used at times to mock actions on the stage.

I found flout used several times in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. For example in Act 5, Scene 1, as a verb:

“I know them, yea, And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple— Scrambling, outfacing, fashion-monging boys, That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander, ...”

And as a noun: Shakespeare wrote in Act 5, Scene 2, of Love’s Labour’s Lost:

“Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout; Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance;”

Flaunt, verb

Pronounced flawnt (awnt is pronounced the way some folks from the upper East Coast pronounce aunt.)

To try to impress others obtrusively.  To show off.

Here the origin is also in doubt. One source says it points towards a French origin but I cannot find a French word so perhaps they were referring to French actions? (The French wouldn't flaunt, would they?) The origin I like the best says perhaps it is a combination of words like flounce and vaunt.

“The most unkindest cut of all,” Gerald exclaimed after his teacher called him a pedant who flaunted his knowledge of Shakespeare by quoting him constantly.

Flautist, noun

Pronounced flou (as in how) and tist as in list.

You might think this is an easy one for anyone paying attention. Clearly a flautist is one who flauts! But you would be wrong. A flautist is one who plays the flute. Some people call a flautist a flutist which is also correct but not as cool or highfalutin!

Flautist comes from the Italian word flautista which means a person who plays the flute.

I wonder, if a flautist is a person who plays the flute is a floutist a person that mocks people?

Floyd, the fellow from Flanders, played the bellows-mender, Flute, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream while Florence, his wife, was the flautist behind the curtain trying to set the mood by using a vintage wooden flute.

Flounce, verb

Pronounced with fl from flour and ounce from the word ounce.

To move with greatly exaggerated and clumsy motions or to make jerky and abrupt movements with the limbs. Also, to flounder or struggle.

Possibly of Scandinavian origin from the Swedish flunsa (to plunge) and Norwegian flunsa  (to hurry). It also may have been formed in the 16^th century from flop and bounce. I like the latter theory better.

For disambiguation (as they say on Wikipedia) purposes we are focusing here on the verb form and not the noun form (which refers to a gathered piece of cloth that is often used with curtains).

The flounder flounced all over the bottom of the boat trying to flip itself back into the water.

Flauta, noun

Pronounced flou as in flour and ta as in ta da! The accent is on the flou.

A tightly rolled flour tortilla filled with shredded chicken or beef or cheese. It is deep fried and then covered with sour cream, guacamole, or salsa, or all of the above if you are lucky. So I can hear it now - some people are saying, “No, that’s a taquito.” Nope, a taquito is the same thing but made with corn tortillas.

This comes from the Spanish flauta meaning flute. So the flauta looks like a small flute – but I guess that would actually be a piccolo.

Felicity ordered a chicken flauta with everything on it at Felipe’s, the little walk-in Mexican restaurant in the Fen.

Flan, noun

Pronunced flawn, as in ‘lawn’ with an f.

Staying on that food theme thing. In Spanish cooking and in the US, a flan is a dessert of sweetened egg custard with a soft caramel layer on top – a crème caramel. A crème brulee has a hard caramel layer on top in case you were confused. In England, a flan is usually a tart with a filling of custard, cheese, or occasionally fruit that has a shell baked in a bottomless metal form known as a flan ring (clever name).

Flan is a French name but comes from the Old German frado meaning flat cake.

Florian liked his flan free standing so he could poke at it with his spoon and watch it wiggle while Flynn like his flan with a baked dough crust so he could pick it up and eat it with his hands.

Flam, noun

Pronounced flam as in Sam.

A hoax, a deception, a trick, or a lie. Also, nonsense or drivel.

This is actually a shortened version of the word flimflam which is also of Scandinavian origin. Why is it words like flounce and flimflam are of Scandinavian origin?

Florrie watched the flimflam man, Flip, flounce around Flavio’s Café trying to pull his hot flauta flam by pretending to have burned himself but not realizing that he was about to slip on the flan the flautist Florrine had accidently knocked on the floor in frustration when Fletcher flouted her for flaunting her knowledge of Friedrich von Flotow’s opera, Martha.

Disclaimer: The author, his heirs, his editors (of which he apparently has many), his colleagues, his cat, nor the finches at his feeder take any responsibility for slip of the tongues, mispronounced words, misunderstandings, or subsequent flouts or flaunts that might come from using The Toad’s Words.

Copyright © by Michael L. VanBlaricum, 2011.

All Rights Reserved.

I Never Stole a Watermelon

 

by  M.L. VanBlaricum

© June 2011

I’m a victim of the year of my birth, 1950, the halfway point in the Twentieth Century. World War I, The Great Depression, Prohibition, and World War II all happened before I was born. I entered the world right when it was getting ready to rest. The main menace to the U.S. when I was a kid was rock and roll. My development was guided by Ding Dong School, Father Knows Best, Make Room for Daddy, and Leave it to Beaver.

I've never stolen a watermelon. I've never pushed over an outhouse, broken my nose, or ridden a horse to school. My dad has. I've never gotten caught playing poker in the back of the school bus or knocked myself out trying to fly like Superman. My older brother has. Not that I'd want to put any of those things on my resume, but everything that I have done CAN be put on my resume.

I never soaped a window or put a firecracker in a mailbox on Halloween. I was the little boy that dressed up like Casper (the Friendly Ghost) and went trick or treating at our neighbors - the ones with the porch lights on.

               

My brother was born in 1943 right in the middle of World War II, just in time to be influenced by Korea and McCarthyism. Having an older brother accounts for my plight a little. He tried things first. I watched and learned the consequences.

               

Remember the song that Howdy Doody used to sing: "Will My Dog be Proud of Me". I can still sing it. All my life I've wondered if my dog would approve of my actions ‑ and the only dog I ever had tiptoed around mud puddles. So, because of Howdy Doody, my social life was about as exciting as ditch water.

I can't tell locker room stories because I didn’t play sports. I was too small for football, too short for basketball, and too slow for track. I can tell you all the heavy action that goes on in the trombone section at band practice. Well, no, I guess I can't. I was the one who always paid attention to the director.

I never went to a canal party. A canal party is where you go to the canal, drink beer, and go skinny dipping ‑ sometimes with girls. On Monday at school you tell lots of lies about it. I did go to school on Mondays.

I never dated until I was sixteen and never drove a car until I was legal. When my dad was a kid they hadn't invented driver's licenses yet.  You could drive as soon as your feet reached the pedals on the Model A and of course you were in the field driving the tractor (or was it oxen?) as soon as you could walk.

I never smoked out behind the woodshed (or anywhere for that matter). We didn’t even have a woodshed. We didn’t need one. Hence, I didn’t have to split firewood. But, growing up in Illinois with images of Honest Abe, The Rail Splitter, everywhere, I felt like I needed to ax something.

I can't tell war stories because I never wore a uniform. No, band and Boy Scout uniforms don't count. My dad was a fighter pilot and my great grandfather helped Sherman burn Atlanta, so I know I have it in my genes. I got a college deferment for Vietnam. Not that I wanted to go to Nam, but they say R & R was great. I have a friend who admired a girl's puppy in Bangkok so she gave it to him - with rice and hot sauce.

I've never gone hunting. Well, except for that one time I went snipe hunting. My dad used to hunt rabbit and squirrel and go ‘coon hunting with his brothers. He tells great stories about their dog, Ol’ Blue ‑ the best darn coonhound in Southern Illinois. My dad had a sawed off shotgun. I had a squirt gun.

I have never broken a bone. I have a friend who tells about ending upside down in the fork of a tree on a ski slope in Aspen with two broken legs. Another friend broke both his arms in Karate class. Even my wife managed to break her leg by riding her bike behind a neighbor as he pulled out of his drive. My daughter broke her arm when she was only five. And did I tell you how my dad broke his nose?

I've never done anything cool. The people who wrote the Boy Scout Handbook point to me with pride. However, I’ve learned the fine art of living vicariously. I can tell if a person has a good story by looking at the glow in his cheeks and the bend in his nose. I've heard some of the best whiskey drinking, girl chasing, plane flying, car racing, bootlegging stories ever told. In fact, I have this friend that tells a whiskey drinking, girl chasing, plane flying, car racing, bootlegging story that would curl your hair.

Ok, ok. I did do some crazy things. I invented streaking! I escaped from my bath and ran naked down the street when I was three. In fifth grade I got sent to the principal’s office for allegedly pushing Barbara Marshall into a mud puddle. I hustled pool in college. Well, actually I helped my friend, the Big Ten pocket billiards champion, hustle by being his shill. The biggie is - I snuck into a strip joint and drank beer at the University of Wisconsin when I was only nineteen. I even talked to one of the strippers. A really nice girl ‑ Bubbles I think her name was. She showed me what to do with a dollar bill.

 

The Toad’s Words - Excursus #23

Well, folks, it has been nigh on ten years since I have posted an excursus of the Toad.  A lot of water and flotsam have gone under the bridge during that time and a lot of words have been caught in the weeds. I have been diligently writing them all down as they appeared and my notebooks have been acting a bit like Harry Potter’s The Monster Book of Monsters. However, as I sit to write #23, I find that my notebooks are all in my warehouse to keep them safe from any disaster that might occur at my house – fire, flood, forgetfulness. So needing a place to start, I checked the alphabetical index of the previous 109 words and I see that the letter ‘R’ is very much underrepresented. Enjoy the read and when done think about the poor people trying to learn English that have to pronounce these words. Also, as always, we enjoy comments and feedback - this is how we learn. Do not hesitate to share this link with others.

Roux, noun

Pronounced rew as in stew.

This is a cooking term meaning a mixture of fat and flour cooked together to form a brown paste or thick gravy.  Often the fat used is butter but it can be various oils or animal fats. Many Cajun recipes, such as gumbo and crawfish etouffée, are made by starting with a roux.  The word roux comes from the French meaning red-haired or brown sauce – you choose. (I wonder if the French ever use roux to mean saucy redhead?)

The plural of roux is roux which is good because I wouldn’t know how to pronounce rouxes.

“Paul brought a half cup of butter to nearly 400 degrees before he put in the flour and spices and stirred them until he had a nice thick roux which he referred to as Cajun napalm.”

Roué, noun

Pronounced rew (as in Roux) ey (as in Fay.) Accent on the é.

A wantonly licentious or lecherous man, a rake, a profligate, a guy that likes saucy redheads. A couple of dictionaries define a roué as a dissipated man. That definition forced me to look up dissipated which apparently can mean indulging in sensual or foolish pleasures. Who knew?

The plural of roué is roués which is also known as a fraternity and in some circles, the trumpet section.

The history of roué is pretty interesting. Roué is the past participle of the French verb rouer meaning broken on the wheel.  Apparently, in 1720, the profligate Philippe II, Duke of Orleans and Regent of France, called his licentious companions “roués” thus implying that they needed to be broken on a wheel. The term then took on the new meaning.

“Bernard and his coterie of debauched rakes, who frequently were in the company of courtesans, are known as the Roués of Rue Royale.” 

Rue, verb

Pronounced roo as in kangaroo.

To be sorry for or to regret. To feel remorse or to lament. This appears to come from the Old English. In Beowulf, it is used as hreow.

“Stu clued Sue that he knew she would rue the day she called in with the blue flu.”

___________________________________________________________________________

Row, noun

Proununced rou as in pow or wow.

A noisy disturbance, a brawl, a loud quarrel. A commotion or clamor. It can be used as an intransitive verb as well. And, so you don’t have to look it up, an intransitive verb is one that doesn’t need a object.

Americans have developed the word rowdy which clearly is a diminutive of row. The origin of row is not known. However, Shakespeare used rowse as a shortened form of carouse in Othello. So let’s blame the existence of row on Shakespeare.

Of course, when pronounced ‘rō’ as in ‘tow’, it refers to a form of nautical locomotion or a line of stuff.

“The sight of a sow standing in the prow and rowing with a bough caused a tremendous row.”

Roe, noun

Pronounced row as in toe.

Fish eggs or the egg laden ovarian member of a fish. Roe from a sturgeon (usually beluga sturgeon) is usually referred to as the delicacy caviar. The word origin is pretty boring. It comes from the Middle English rowe.

A roe is also a small deer with forked horns.

“Mr. Sears sold his roebuck so that he would have enough money to buy a ton of Russian Beluga roe.”

Ruse, noun

Pronounced rooz, as in kangaroos.

A strategy or subterfuge to mislead or trick someone.

This word comes from the Old French ruser meaning to dodge or practice deceit. In the seventeenth century, it was used as a hunting term to describe the dodging motion of the game.

“The roués rued the day when they caused a row by attempting a ruse to steal the beluga roe from the chef while he was focusing on his roux.”

Note: If you read this before the evening of 7 June 2011 you will have seen an error in my definition of intransitive verb under the word 'row.' Amy Rogers pointed out that I said 'subject' instead of 'object.' It has been fixed but in defense, I was half right - they both have 'ject' as part of the word.

Disclaimer: The author, his heirs, his editors (of which he apparently has many), his colleagues, his cat, nor the gophers in his yard take any responsibility for slip of the tongues, mispronounced words, misunderstandings, or subsequent rows that might come from using The Toad’s Words.

Copyright © by Michael L. VanBlaricum, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

New Trick for Old Dogs

My Facebook friends may recall that my one and only 2011 New Year’s Resolution was to learn new tricks so that I don’t become an old dog. The hard part was deciding what those new tricks might be. I considered learning to play the blues on the harmonica or blue grass on a five-string banjo. Both are still on my life list but I don’t see any hope for this year. I considered learning to tango but that requires my partner be involved and this was my resolution, not hers. Reading and writing poetry has become my main new trick. I would like to say that I came up with that by sagacity, but the truth is that it was serendipity. However, this short note is about another new trick which I freely admit was gotten to by having observant friends that like to point out my weaknesses.

I learned to tie my shoes fifty-five years ago in kindergarten. Jody McQuown taught me how to do this while we were supposed to be napping on our rugs. She taught me to make what I now know to be named the Two-Loop Shoelace Knot. This is quite different from  the Standard Shoelace Knot that everyone else in my family was tying. It seemed to me (as a five-year old) that making bunny ears and wrapping one around the other and then pushing one through the rabbit hole was a lot easier than what my parents and brother were trying to teach me. I still do.

I have often bragged that I tie a perfect bow for my shoes. When my wife and daughters needed a bow for a dress or their hair they would come to me to make one of these very symmetric bows. But what I didn’t realize, until a few weeks back, was that my “perfect bow” was not.

An emeritus math professor friend of mine was visiting and watching me tie my shoes. Engineers and mathematicians are really good at staring at other people’s feet. How do you tell if an engineer is an extrovert or an introvert? An extroverted engineer looks at your feet while he is talking to you, an introvert looks at his own. Anyway, my math professor friend watched me tie my traditional Two-Loop (Bunny-Ear) Shoelace Knot and then make it into a double knot. “I thought you were an Eagle Scout?” he said.

“Yes,” I answered with a little fear. Then, once I determined that he truly was watching the knot I tied, I said, “I know this is different but it produces a perfect knot.”

“No,” he said with a tone that I am sure he had developed from years of telling students that the way they just took the integral of the differential form was wrong. “You just tied a Granny Knot. No wonder you have to tie a double knot.”

Over the years I have taken to tying double knots in the bows so they don’t come undone. I first started doing this back when I ran with coworkers at lunchtime and they didn’t like stopping while I retied my shoes.

I was stunned. I looked at my shoes (more out of shame than checking what he had just said) and realized that he was right. Fifty-five years of training my hands to go right-over-left then right-over-left was wrong. I should have been going left-over-right then right-over-left, if I had ever thought about it. Tying your shoes is like riding a bicycle, if you think about what you are doing you will probably mess up. Now I would have to retrain my hands. I didn’t think it was possible. I immediately untied my shoes and retied them properly but with much difficulty. I was certain that I could not learn this new approach. I would never be able to tie my shoes in the dark again.

I am here to report that my old dogs now have new bows. Not only does a properly tied square-knot bow not need to be double knotted but old hands can be retaught. I still can’t figure out how I didn’t notice that I have been tying a Granny Knot for all of those years. I guess I am an extrovert.

Reflections in a Double Doo Wop

By

M.L. VanBlaricum

© May 2011

I drove my love to the airport today.

Her heart now beats A Thousand Miles Away.

Over the Mountain, Across the Sea,

We have an Unchained Melody.

In the Still of the Night I put music on,

And listened to some doo wop songs.

C, A minor, F, then G,

Put me in a maudlin key.

My heart became a little blue.

All I want is Only You.

I should probably change this song.

Perhaps a Rama Lama, Ding Dong?