Words

Doesn't she look as if the world has awed her? I actually remember that feeling.








I’ve been told I started talking very young. My sister says I never shut up either. I know that must be true because some of my earliest memories involve words and the pictures they evoked. I remember playing with words.

Some words were just the best things rolling over my tongue. Words like: purple, trustful, silk, aluminum, ambulance, butterfly (can’t you see it), munch, cushion, chocolate (Well, that is delicious rolling over your tongue)…ah, delicious, scrumptious, swallow (a thing and an action), cheese (another yum). See what I mean?



I think I mentioned in this blog before that at about four or five I asked the neighbor as he was digging in his yard what his name was.


“Dug,” he answered.

I remember laughing and saying, “Your name is Dug and you’re digging?” I thought that was so funny (Hey, I didn’t say I had an early sophisticated sense of humor). Though I wasn’t in school yet, I already associated the word dug with action, not with a name. And in my mind his name was spelled, Dug. It was when I started school that year and met another student with the name, Doug, that I understood two words could sound the same and that words were more. Things, actions, emotions, people.

I was lucky, I had parents who read to me, and once I began reading on my own, learning more and more about words, nothing held me back.



Unfortunately for my sister (she says she couldn’t get a word in edgewise), I didn’t stop talking, but as I matured I put my words to paper. Volumes and volumes of paper: notes and letters to friends, Slam books, teen angst poetry and stories, essays, journals (Dumb me; I burned these after a bad break-up. Oh, the drama), lists (I have lists for my lists), any excuse, I wrote.

So Today, just for fun: a challenge. Play with your words. Think about them differently. Turn verbs into nouns. Nouns into verbs. Make poetry. Rhyme, counter-rhyme.