On Hissy-Fitting and Lickety-Splitting

Great Big Baby Dog Woodrow, Old Lady Dog Callie, and I were lying on our bellies looking out my attic-bedroom window at 6:15 this morning.  Snuggling in bed with your dogs looking out the window together in the early morning is one of the great pleasures of life.  I commend it to you.

While we were gazing at the ice-covered woods, the dogs began throwing a hissy-fit.  If you are not from the American south, you may not know that a hissy-fit is a tantrum.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines hissy-fit as a sudden period of uncontrolled and silly anger like a child’s.  I do not think people from Cambridge throw hissy-fits. 

In addition, one does not HAVE a hissy-fit.  One THROWS a hissy-fit.  I do not know why.  

Perhaps it’s because throw is a strong verb.  A good hissy-fit is always thrown.  Most recently I threw a hissy-fit when I dropped my phone in the bath.

But back to the dogs’ hissy-fit.  They threw it because Young Red Fox was lickety-splitting down the cart path. 

The Oxford Dictionary defines lickety-split thus: as quickly as possible.  OD says lickety-split is an adverb, but I prefer it as a verb.  I know the word more intimately than the writers of OD do because I’ve been lickety-splitting all my life, and I doubt that anyone who ever worked on the Oxford Dictionary has ever lickety-splitted.  I can’t imagine a wizened don sitting in a dusty library telling another wizened don, “I need a definition of perspicacious lickety-split.”

Please note that I like verbing nouns, adjectives, and adverbs.  Lickety-splitting is a more powerful verb than running lickety-split.

Lest you wonder whether verbing is a verb, it is.  Antimeria/anthimeria is the act of changing one part of speech into another, such as verbing.    If you change the word, it’s a derivation.  If you don’t change the word, it’s a conversion or a zero derivation.

Lest you think this essay is pointless, let me assure you that I have a point: life is too short to throw hissy-fits by annoyances lickety-splitting through our lives.  Like other people’s antimeria:  Yesterday I was lickety-splitting past another white-haired woman who was throwing a hissy-fit about her daughter-in-law’s use of the word cocooning, as in, “We’re staying home cocooning this weekend.” 

I wanted to say, “Lady, at our age, life is too short for throwing hissy-fits.

“Instead, we should each go home and snuggle on our beds with our dogs and gaze into the snow-filled woods.” 

Dogs who get hissyfied by foxes lickety-splitting by.

Hissyfied?  One of my favorite antimeria is making predicate adjectives by adding fied to almost any part of speech.  So I hope you have been smartified today because I taught you about antimeria/anthimeria. 

And I hope you stop lickety-splitting for the rest of the day, get unhissyfied, and go snuggle with your dogs on your bed and stare out the window together. And thus be blessifed.

 

 

 

The Old Man in the Yellow Hat

At this moment, 8:10 at night, 25 degrees outside, an old man in a yellow hat is lost near my house.  I fear he will die.

I came upstairs to my bedroom at 6:00 tonight to read.  When I returned downstairs at 8:00, I saw the headlights of a vehicle drive up the golf cart path beside my house and turn down the path on the fifth green.  First I thought, “Kids!”  Then I thought, “Oooh.  Old people having a secret assignation!” 

Then the vehicle started shining a spotlight around in the trees.  Surely no one would be poaching in the middle of the village, I thought.  Then, Maybe it’s the police. Maybe someone has seen a peeping tom. When I was tiny, we had a peeping tom in our neighborhood.  My mom said a group of our neighborhood men “ran him out of town on a rail.” 

I imagined my dad and a dozen other men running east down Gidding Street all the way across town, and then north up First, and then east again on Prince Street out into the country with torches.  Some of them were carrying a railroad rail, and the peeping tom was riding it like a horse in the moonlight.  I imagined the neighborhood men shouting, “Get out and stay out!” 

I had heard of tarring and feathering, and I imagined some of the men running with buckets of black tar and carrying white geese under their arms.  These they would pluck after they had thrown the tar on the man on the rail.  (I had no idea that the tar would be hot and burn.  It would have just been like my Elmer’s School Glue.) Then they would throw goose feathers at the man, and some of them would stick to the tar.  I thought this would be a helluva strange thing to do.  But I thought that grown-ups were strange, so there was no telling what they might do. 

But back to tonight…

“Don,” I said, “A vehicle is driving down the golf path shining a searchlight!”

“Well,” he said, “While you were upstairs, three men came to the front door and asked if I had seen a man wearing a yellow hat.”

“Had you?”

“No.”

“Oh, my,” I said.  “Someone who has dementia is lost.  His people are looking for him.  If they don’t find him tonight, he’ll die of exposure.”

“Probably.”

Now it’s 8:50.  The vehicle has not returned.

I wonder if the men found The Old Man in the Yellow Hat.  I wonder if he was already dead from exposure when they came to our house.  If he is still alive, I wonder if he’s frightened.  I know he is cold.  I wonder if he was a war veteran and thinks he is a young soldier in enemy territory, if he’s seen the searchlight, but he’s hiding from it.

I wonder if he’s dying as I write this. 

God, have mercy.

The Kindness of Strangers: Green Beans

Last week I took my car to Little Rock for its 12,000 mile oil change.  The dealership sits on the east side of six lanes full of hurtling traffic.  A supermarket sits on the west side.  Although rain was falling intermittently, I was determined to walk to the supermarket to eat lunch while I waited because I like their fried chicken and tender green beans. 

I zipped up my raggedy bum-around jacket, took a deep breath, and then barreled into the traffic.  I dodged three cars to get through the first three lanes to the median, but I made it. 

I scrabbled over the stickery bushes on the median. No mean feat, that.

The second three lanes were easy after the first three and the median, and I reached the parking lot safely.    

The rain started pouring, so I ran the last twenty yards to the supermarket’s doorway.  By the time I got inside, I was a mess: wet, cold, bedraggled.  My bum-around coat was neither waterproof nor warm enough.  My white hair was plastered down on my head.  I suppose I looked like I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from. 

A woman I had not seen before waited on me.  She had the leathery skin of someone who had worked outdoors all her life, or perhaps had smoked for years, or drank too much.  She didn’t have any teeth.  She’s had a hard life, I thought.  She looks like she doesn’t know where her next meal is coming from.  I wish I could help her.

“Lunch special, please,” I said.  “Fried chicken.  Dark.”

She dug through the chicken for a thigh and a leg.  “Sides?” she asked.

“Corn.  And green beans.”  She ladled me up a scoop of buttery corn. 

“What other side did you say you wanted?”

“Green beans,” I said.  “They look real good.”

She raised her head and studied me for a long moment. Then she served me a giant helping of green beans.  She paused, then dipped her spoon in the beans again and added a second big helping.  She looked up, and at the moment our eyes met, I read her thoughts.  She’s had a hard life, she thought.  She looks like she doesn’t know where her next meal is coming from.  I can do this to help her.

So that day, two old women touched each other’s hearts.  She and I saw in each other a needy stranger.  I knew I could do nothing for her, but she knew she could do something for me.  She ladled me a mountain of tender green beans.  And the gift of kindness to a stranger.

 

 

An Adventuresome Sort of a Person

Madeline ran her thumb over the smooth bowl of the silver spoon in her pocket.  Then she slid her wrinkled hand back into her doe-skin glove.  She interlocked her fingers and twiddled her thumbs.  Bus 113 came and went.  Bus 847.  361.  When 431 pulled up, she knew it was the right one because the digits equaled 8.  She poked a ten-dollar bill into the slot and walked to the eighth row.  A seat was available, but the person sitting next to it was all wrong.  No seats were available in the ninth row.  The lone person in the tenth row was asleep.  The eleventh row was the right one. 

Madeline sat down next to a young woman holding a baby.  The woman wore a threadbare coat, but the baby looked warm. “Excuse me,” said Madeline as she sat down.  The baby smiled.

The woman nodded and smiled.  “Lovely child,” Madeline said.  She held one gloved finger out to the baby.  He reached out and curled his fingers around hers.

“Thank you. He’s eight months old today.”

Madeline reached into her pocket and held out the teaspoon.

“Would you like a spoon?” she asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Would you like a spoon?” Madeline repeated.  “This spoon,” she said, waving it gently.  “You could feed the little one with it.  It could be an eight-month birthday present.”

The woman raised one eyebrow and tilted her head.  She reached out and took the spoon.  Her hands are red and raw, thought Madeline.  She works hard.  Her life with a baby must be hard.   “You may sell it if you wish.  You might get $50 at a pawn shop.  It’s worth over a hundred. Perhaps two.”

The bus clanked to a stop.  Before the startled woman could answer, Madeline skittled out the door and was sitting on the bus-stop bench.

Madeline looked around.  Colors seem brighter, she thought.  This is what life must be like for adventurous persons.  From somewhere far away, she heard an accordion playing.  “I will find that accordion,” she whispered aloud.  “I will sit and listen to the accordion player, and I will drop twenty dollars into his monkey’s cup.” 

Before today, Madeline would not have given an accordion player the time of day, much less put money in his cup.  Then she wondered whether the accordion player might be a woman.  An old woman like herself. 

She wondered whether the old woman would even have a monkey.  Monkeys can bite, she thought.  She decided to google where one could go to see monkeys in the wild.  She did not approve of keeping a wild animal tied to a musical instrument.  But she would like to see one in the wild.

Madeline smelled warm bread and wondered if she would have even noticed it under ordinary circumstances.  She followed her nose to an Italian bakery with three tables.  She ordered a latte and a slice of Italian wedding cake.  She sat in the corner and watched people come and go.  A busty woman with a small child bought the child a giant pretzel.  The clerk ran a ribbon through the pretzel and tied it.  The busty woman slipped it around the child’s neck.

When she finished her cake and coffee, Madeline bought a giant pretzel.  “Tie a ribbon through it, please, like you did for the little girl.” The clerk handed her the pretzel and giggled when Madeline slipped it around her own neck. 

“Sorry,” said the clerk.  “I just thought you were buying it for a grandchild.”

“I did buy it for a grandchild,” she said.  “Do you think that I never had grandparents?  That I am not someone’s grandchild?”

The clerk blushed, mumbled, “Sorry” again and counted Madeline’s $5.75 change back to her. 

“That’s alright, dear,” said Madeline as she shoved the change back across the counter.  “Keep it.”

With her pretzel around her neck, Madeline set off to find the accordion player and her monkey.  What sort of person would play an accordion and own a monkey? Madeline wondered.  She had never known such a person.  She decided that such a person would most certainly be the adventuresome sort.

She closed her eyes and listened.  She held one hand over her left ear and cupped the other hand around her right.  She turned slowly in a circle, and when she located the direction of the sound, set off.  Two blocks later, she saw the accordion player, who even from a distance was indisputably male.  He did not have a monkey.  He did have the accordion case open on the ground.  People had dropped change and a few dollar bills in the case.

“Stop,” commanded Madeline.  “Stop playing.  Please.  I want to talk to you.”

The accordion player wore a grey beret on his greying hair that complemented the blue foul-weather fisherman’s sweater on his substantial frame.  Very handsome, thought Madeline.  Handsome and Italian. 

“Where is your monkey?” she asked.

 The man drew himself up to his full six-foot two.  “I am not an organ grinder,” he said.  “I am a musician.  I play the accordion.”

“I will pay you handsomely to come home with me and play for an hour.”  She dug two one-hundred dollar bills out of her purse and handed them to him.  “Come along,” she commanded.  She turned and hailed a taxi.  The taxi driver loaded the accordion player’s instrument into the trunk.  The driver blinked in surprise as Madeline gave him her address.  So did the accordion player.

When the taxi pulled up at Madeline’s building, a doorman stepped forward to open her door while the driver fetched the accordion.  Madeline tipped the driver a twenty. 

A nervous young man in an Armani suit rushed out of the building.  “Madam!” he cried.  “Where have you been?  I was terrified when you didn’t answer my knock this morning!  We have correspondence to attend to!”

“Do it yourself,” she said as she waved him away.  “For the next hour I will be unavailable.  I am going to listen to the accordion.”  She turned to the bewildered accordion player.  “Come,” she commanded.  Then she asked, “Are you married?”

After the accordion player finished his concert and drank a cup of tea, he left with a promise to return for lunch the following day. 

Madeline’s secretary rushed into her library.  “Madam, what is the meaning of all this?  You disappear for hours, you come home with a pretzel tied around your neck, and you bring an accordion player for tea?  Have you lost your mind?”

“Quite the contrary,” she said, “I have found it.”  She held out the half-eaten pretzel.  “Bite?” she asked.

“Madam, I am worried,” he said.  “I should call your nephew!”

“That is the last person you are to call,” said Madeline.  “I informed him yesterday that I have decided to leave my entire estate to charity instead of to him and his spoiled offspring.  He threatened to have me declared incompetent.  I am, I assure you, quite competent.”

She patted the couch next to her, and her secretary sat down.  “You know that I have spent my life penny-pinching and running this company.  I have always done what was expected of me.  Yet I have wondered about the people who live other kinds of lives: people who ride on busses, people who eat pretzels, people who stand on street corners and play musical instruments." 

She placed her hand gently on his arm. "I have wondered about people who go hungry at night while I sit alone and dine on soup from thousand-dollar tureens in hundred-dollar bowls with hundred-dollar spoons. I have decided that I am going to start giving these silly things away.   I do not need them.  And they can do some good feeding the poor who can either eat out of them or sell them for cans of soup they can eat with plastic spoons.”

“What I do need,” she said, “Are memories to keep me warm.  I need adventures.  I need to meet adventuresome sorts of persons who do not do what is expected of them, but rather do whatever it is that they themselves wish to do.  So I am going to become an adventuresome sort of person.  Tomorrow I will turn 80.  I will turn the company over to one of the vice presidents.  And I will have adventures for as long as I am able.  When I am on my death bed, I do not wish to wonder what might have been.”  She patted the secretary’s hand.  His mouth hung open. 

“Close your mouth,” she said.  He didn’t move.  She gave his leg a sharp slap.  “You look like a fool.”  Then she added, “Tell Cook to prepare a special Italian lunch for tomorrow.  And call my travel agent.  Tell her to arrange for the first possible cruise to some place where one might see a wild monkey.  Two tickets.  Captain’s suite.”

As the secretary turned to leave, shaking his head, Madeline added, “One more thing.  Tell the chauffeur to be available tomorrow after lunch.” 

“Where shall I tell him you wish to go, Madam?”

Madeline smiled.  “Tell him I am going to buy an accordion.” 

 

 

Addendum to My Taxonomy of Urination

Knowledge is dynamic; research constantly reveals new truth.  That which was once impossible is now a reality.  New species are discovered.  Old taxonomies must be revised.  Ergo, I am revising my month-old Taxonomy of Urination with this addendum. 

A few days after I posted my taxonomy, my “like a second dad to me” junior high band director called.  He said, “I have read and been thinking about your taxonomy of urination.”

“So what have you been thinking?” I asked.

“It’s good, but I decided that I need to tell you that you left something out.”

“What’s that?” I asked, grabbing a pencil and notepad so I could get every word down correctly.

“Taking a piss,” he said.  “You left out taking a piss.  That’s an important omission.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I didn’t think about it at the time.  Talk to me.  I need you to do a semantic analysis to differentiate taking a piss from the other types of urination I listed.”

“Well,” he said, “When I was a young man, I could take a piss several times a day.  It’s what you do when you really have to go, and your stream is strong and vigorous, and you can pee a perfect arc up into the air.  You have a powerful feeling of relief.  You usually follow it with a big sigh and a smile.”

“It gives you great pleasure?”

“Oh, yes.  Taking a piss is definitely a great pleasure.”

“But you’re old now, Dad.  Can you still take a piss?”

“Only rarely.  Mostly I tinkle.  Sitting down.  But once in a while, I can take a piss, like after a long car ride.  And it’s glorious.”

“How does it make you feel now at your age?”

“Oh, it makes me feel like a young man again.  It’s a wonderful pleasure.”

“Got it, Dad.  Thanks.  I’ll update the taxonomy soon.”

So please add taking a piss to my Taxonomy of Urination. 

And thanks, Dad, for your contribution to science.  May you still be taking an occasional piss when you’ve turned 105.

 

 

Tales of a Book Room Lady: A First-Class Man

I am The Book Room Lady at the local humane society thrift shop (or charity shop, as they say in Britian). 

As The Book Room Lady, I spend two afternoons a month sorting through books that people have donated.  I have to decide which books to put on the shelves and which ones to put in the "FREE" box.  Some I have to throw away because they are so mildewed or silverfish-infested that no one should take them home.  But that's another post.

For every newly-donated book I shelve, I have to discard one we already have.  We have limited space, so if I decide to shelve a newly-donated book, I have to remove a shelved one in that same category, eg. fiction for fiction, biography for biography, etc.  Simple geometry: I only have X cubic inches of space for each category of book, so one in, one out. 

I quickly screen the new donations for obvious faults you wouldn't believe I have to screen for: Does the book have peanut butter on it?  Are the pages water-damaged?  Cockroach chewed?  But once a book has passed my screening, then I have to examine it more closely.  That's when I make some wonderful discoveries because people tuck things into books. 

I've never found money, although I've heard stories of purveyors of used books who have.  I find lots of notes in nonfiction books, ideas the reader wants to remember, like "Good mutual funds for retirement," or "Possible paint colors for the kitchen."  Occasionally I find shopping lists or to-do lists and wonder whether the groceries got bought or the chores got tackled.  I sporadically find commercial bookmarks with insipid verses that make me cringe.  

Sometimes, though, I find notes that are remarkable.  Yesterday, in book on how to be a better father, I found two index cards.  A boy's name was written on each, and then what appeared to be the result of the father's introspection after interviewing each son.

Bruce- Spend more time with him.  Play video games with him.  Invite him to go to the gym.  Play basketball with him.  Why don't I do those things already?  Why did I not know that he wants to spend more time doing things with me?

Stephen- Praise him when he does something right.  Listen to him when he has a problem.  Don't try to fix it.  Don't criticize.  Just listen.  What makes me always criticize him?  Why am I acting like my own father?  He always criticized me, never would listen to my problems without telling me what a screw-up I am.  Why am I treating Stephen like my dad treated me?  Why haven't I learned from his mistakes?

I wonder whether those boys are fathers themselves now.  I wonder whether that man became a better dad than his own father was.  God bless him. I hope he did.

But the note I found that has moved me most was one I found last spring.  Written in an old book, on a yellowed piece of paper, in an old man's shaky handwriting, it read, "Dan Smith: a first-class man."  Then it had a phone number. 

A first-class man.   Wow.  To be called a first-class man is a thing devoutly to be wished. 

I thought about "a first-class woman," but something changed for me in the translation. 

I think of a first-class man as brave, strong yet gentle, humble, a man who spends time with his children and listens to them without criticizing, a man who would lay down his life for his family and friends. 

I think of a first-class woman as wearing an elegant navy skirted-suit and heels.  I see her directing a board meeting or speaking on behalf of endangered whales at a senate hearing. 

I don't know why I have those pictures in my head, but I do.

Sitting there in the book room in the thrift shop, I picked up my cell phone and called the phone number listed as belonging to the first-class man.  It was disconnected.  I wasn't surprised.  The first-class man probably died long ago.  The old man who wrote the note probably died long ago, too. 

The first-class man's name was so common that trying to find him or his family wasn't practical.  So I put the note in my wallet, brought it home, and tucked it in a book of my own for safekeeping.  To throw away a note with the name of a first-class man on it seemed... well... it seemed.... just WRONG.  Maybe some day after I am dead and gone, a book-room lady will find the note as she goes through my books in her charity shop. Maybe she will take it home and tuck it into her own book to continue to keep it safe.

All summer and fall I have wondered what kinds of things one need do in order to be called a first-class man.  I want to do those kinds of things, to be remembered in that way.  I want to be that kind of person. 

So tomorrow, and every tomorrow hereafter, I will try to do something befitting of my image of a first-class man.  I will try to live my life so that although I happen to be a heterosexual woman, after I die, someone will think of me and tuck a piece of paper in a book, a piece of paper that says, "Millie Gore-Lancaster: a first-class man."

Tea

       When I was three, I realized that women were fundamentally different from men.  Men had their hair cut by barbers, wore pants, drank coffee, and stood to pee.  Women had their hair dressed by hair dressers, wore dresses, drank tea, and sat to tee-tee.  I understood the connection between drinking tea and tee-teeing, but not between drinking coffee and peeing.  I asked my mother if coffee were made from peas.  Without asking me where I got that idea, she said it was made from beans.  I thought, “Close enough.”

When I was four, I heard my mother in the kitchen early one winter morning.  She was sitting in the dark with the shades drawn.  She was drinking coffee.  I was horrified.  But then I was intrigued.  This meant that ANYTHING was possible!  Ten minutes later she heard me sobbing in the bathroom.  She ran in to see me standing in front of the toilet trying to urinate.  “Honey!” she cried, “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to pee like Daddy!” I cried.  “But I can’t do it!  It’s running down my legs!”

She said, “Honey, only boys and men can tee-tee standing up.”

I cried, “But you were drinking coffee!”

She said, “Huh?”

I never tried to stand to pee again after that, but I did learn to enjoy coffee like a man.  And I learned to adore tea like a woman.

My tea is subtle and seductive with names like Prince of Wales or Earl Grey.  But my favorite is Downton Abbey’s® Mrs. Patmore’s Pudding Tea shipped to me directly by the Minister of Supply upon order of the Minister of Tea of the Republic of Tea®.  My mouth waters as I prepare to serve it to myself on a silver tray with lemon curd on a scone.  Hell, with a peanut butter sandwich.

Years ago, in National Geographic, I read an article about the tough-but-gentle people who live in the Himalayas.  The writer interviewed an ancient man living in a cave high on the face of a mountain in Nepal.  The writer asked the wrinkled fellow with the twinkly eyes whether he missed having the conveniences of western civilization.  The man, whose white beard flowed to his chest and who was so old that he probably had to sit to pee, said, “I have my good, strong, hot sweet tea and my friends.  What more could I want?”

I think about that man sometimes.  His soul has surely soared heavenward as his body burned on a funeral pyre, but our spirits are linked by tea.  By the ritual, the slowingdownness of making and sipping tea.  The forced steppingbackness from the daily rushing to hither, thither, and yon.  The inthemomentness of closing the eyes and inhaling the magical aroma deep into the soul.

I, too, am old now, and I am content with being an old woman.  With having my white hair dressed by a hair dresser.  With sitting to tee-tee, though sometimes with difficulty getting up afterward.  And with indulging myself, caressing myself, adoring myself, with my daily ritual of tea.