I just deleted 1,221 words with the sweep of my mouse. I wish cleaning my kitchen was that easy. But the words I had chosen for this week’s column refused to cooperate with me and had to be expurgated.
“Be gone, foul language,” I said as the words vanished. “There are approximately 170,000 more I can pick from. I can certainly write a column without any of your tiresome terms.” Now, I didn’t destroy the words entirely, just deleted them. So, if you want to use “love” in a letter to your girlfriend, it’s still available.
Sadly, the verb brabble – which succinctly describes most of the Twitter conversations I have ever had – and cockalorum – which succinctly describes most of the people I’ve ever had Twitter conversations with – are not readily available to English speakers anymore.
I didn’t analyze the deleted words, but I can tell you the verbs I tried to use for my column were ghastly bores. They all refused to do anything or help anybody. And the nouns were just as bad, all declining to signify what they were supposed to signify.
I completely lost my patience when the word broccoli wanted to signify cauliflower.
Well, dog my cats! The behavior of the nouns and verbs had a chilling effect on the adverbs and adjectives which need something to modify.
For example, the noun “team,” which can be a verb or a noun, will need defining information. It will want to know if it is the home team or the visiting team. At the conclusion of nine innings, the world will want to sort out who is the losing team and who is the winning team.
Eventually, a decision will have to be made on whether or not it is a good team or a bad team, or even a poorly managed team, which gets the adverbs involved as well.
But this concept of team is where the original column ran off the rails to begin with.
Though I rarely cover high-school sporting events anymore, I was asked by one of our sportswriters if I could shoot some photos at the Lake Oconee Academy baseball game a couple of weeks ago. As is often the case in the spring, sportswriters can be spread pretty thin by baseball, soccer (boys and girls), track (boys and girls), and golf (boys and girls) – not to mention the corresponding junior-varsity and middle school teams.
The sheer volume can be overwhelming. So, I was happy to help out.
The weather was pleasant, and I arrived just as the game was about to start. One of the musical selections played prior to the game was “Sweet Hitchhiker” by Credence Clearwater Revival.
The tune briefly transported me back in time to a restaurant in Calhoun, Georgia, where I am sitting with my cousin Buddy. We have just buried our Granddaddy Stone, the family patriarch. The song seems out of place, considering the gloomy context, but its audacious lyrics brighten our moods.
But words can be clever sprites and they don’t always want to make you feel better.
I refocused on the game at hand, but as soon as I saw the name “Red Devils” emblazoned on the jerseys of the visitors from Lincoln County my mood darkened. And at the risk of darkening yours, I’ll explain.
The term Red Devil obtained a new and sinister meaning for me recently when a close friend of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her treatment plan includes a chemotherapy drug called doxorubicin, which gets its nickname – Red Devil – from the medicine’s bright red color.
Red Devil comes with a laundry list of side effects that range from inconvenient to possibly lethal, and all of a sudden, I started thinking about my friend and what she faces in the coming months.
And on top of everything else, her mother also was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few days after my friend learned of her own challenge. Her mom started the same chemo a few days later.
So, my friend is trying to endure her own treatments and take care of her mother at the same time. It all seems so unfair to burden one person with such torments, but my friend has put on her brave face and says she has to be strong for her parents. Her courage is admirable.
So, anyway, I’m looking at that confounded cursor blink and all the words I know seem to fail on every front. They certainly seem incapable of helping anyone.
Selah.