Tagged: A thru Z

©10-31-2020, Olan L. Smith

Alligators: As a child, my parents bought me an alligator as a pet; it was really a dwarf crocodile, but same difference to a child. We kept him in an aquarium, indoors. When it came to summer, we put it in the outdoor pool we built for the goldfish. I don't know what we were thinking, an alligator with fish, but it never ate them. Come fall, when it was time to bring the reptile and fish in, the alligator was gone. I told my mother and she said, "it's most likely crawled out and headed to the neighbor's pond. Don't worry it will never survive our harsh winters. So, the gator was forgotten for the next six years, until I met my neighbor boy walking on the sidewalk. He asked me if I'd lost an alligator. I replied, yes, about six years ago. Well, we caught it. It was six feet long (the maximum these dwarf animals grow). I guess the moral of the story is to keep all your alligators on a leash.

Britches: Where I grew up in the Midwest, we'd sometimes call our pants, or britches. If we were acting snotty we were told that we were getting too big for our britches. Of course big britches were actually called overalls or Big Smiths. Dad wore Big Smiths, something that was not lost on my young mind, as Dad was a big man and a Smith. In those days we didn't have closet space, so clothes were put in dresser drawers, wardrobes, or were hung up on a peg. One morning, Dad said, "Wouldn't be nice if we could put our pants on two legs at a time, just jump in them; this is long before the YouTube challenge of jumping into your britches. Of course, even at that young age I knew he was joking around, but it has never left my mind; what if...

Cauliflower: As a child, the mere thought of eating cauliflower would send most good children running from the dinner table, and it would cause down turned lips, or real tears and loud balling from squinted eyes. I was no different; I think it is a universal response. Over the decades, I've grown to like cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, and the hated broccoli. I think it's more of the hard C sound, that rings wrong in the child's mind; perhaps they should name it yummyflower, gummyflower, sweetflower, just dip it in the honey sauce, and make way for the tummy.

Delivery: In this time of the Covid-19 plague, we often depend on delivery, and online shopping. Sure you have to pay more but then you're not have to drive, so they do the shopping, and best of all you're not risking your life. I wasn't frightened during the Aids epidemic, or the Mad Cow fright, and both of those were 100% fatal; the first was a quick death. In 1 year, your brain turns into mush, and Aids was a slow death. The Sars-CoV-02, however, is airborne and it scares the heck out of me that some invisible thing could kill me. So, I stay indoors and depend on deliveries.

Elmer J. Fudd: Never could kill that darn wabbit; perhaps, it was because of the lisp, or he was only the co-star; the co-star code is you can't kill the star, no matter what. Shoot him a thousand times, blow his head off and watch it grow back, but you can't kill the wabbit. Shhh... I'm hunting a wabbit.

Fudge: Got to love fudge, but can't eat it anymore because of diabetes, however, fudge can mean other things like "Don't fudge on the test," or cloud the issue, make the facts blurry, or used as an interjection, before it becomes a replacement for an obscenity.

Grace: There by the grace of God go I, or a period of reprieve before judgement, forgiveness, or he/she moves with grace (refinement). I certainly don't move with grace, but have received grace from people and other powers beyond my reckoning.

Hunting: I use to hunt animals to kill for food, but gave that up about 1990, as I'd rather shoot photos of the animals than to kill them. I can buy my food from a grocer, I don't need to hunt. Now, if times were hard and the only way to survive was to hunt, I could do it, but I doubt that time will ever come in the stint I have left in the world.

Indigenous: I'm not indigenous to North America, although my lineage came in the 1600s; sure I was born here but I'm a product of an invading species of humans. My heritage is English and Eastern European with a touch of Scandinavian. I am indigenous to England.

Jealousy: What a difficult feeling to have, but we all have twangs of jealousy, and not always in a relationship; it could be at the professional level or competition. I heard people say to me, "I wish I thought of that," why on Earth would anyone want to be jealous of something someone else thought of before you? Hell, if I hadn't thought of it first, you'd never have known about it. Be yourself; think for yourself and come up with your own ideas. TS Eliot said, "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it is torn." We can't think of something truly our own because most everything has been written down, but we can imitate the greats, and in some ways, find our own focus, our own voice. Picasso is quoted as saying something similar about artists, but more than likely, he ripped it off of TS Eliot and molded it into his own profession.

Killing: There is too much killing of humans in the world, most in the name of religion or governments, and the other is murder for whatever reason. The saying is live and let live, the reality is we don't let live we want others to conform to our system of beliefs. In a science fiction show there is always one character who want to interfere with the alien cultures, seeing them as evil just because it is against his moral up-bringing; leave well enough alone.

Love: I loved my mother, my father and my siblings, but I don't say it aloud to others very often. Why, because I think it will be misinterpreted. The ancient Greeks had several words for love, so that's why there was no confusion as to what it meant. What do we have; one word? Having only one word for love is sort of like chatting without emoticons; we use them on the internet, so we are understood fully. I love you! You determine the intent.

Missouri: Missouri is my state (or 'small country') within the US. We have our own constitution, our own laws, and our own jurisdictions. When our laws conflict with the US Constitution, the Supreme Court of the US determines if it is constitutional, and if not it is repealed, or rewritten to fit within the purview of the Court. In other words, our laws cannot supersede the US constitution. Does it sound confusing? It is. If I drive in Missouri, the speed limit is 70 maximum, while in Kansas it is 80 mph, and unlimited in some states (the last I heard).

Missouri is a French word attributed to the indigenous "people with canoes made of logs," and is the name of the 2nd longest river in the US. It is just 100 miles shorter than the Mississippi River and the Missouri River travels down from near Canada to cross the entire state of Missouri to St. Louis. It crosses the State of Missouri from Kansas City, merging with the Mississippi at St. Louis. If you stuck your finger on a map of Missouri at the middle of the state, following the Missouri River, you would most likely land in my town.

Never, not, and no: The N sound is used mostly for a negative connotation. If you want to become positive, remove words that start with the letter N. Anxiety suffers usually use a lot of N words. It is hard not to if your mind is programmed to think negatively.

Olan: I love my name. At one time I wanted to use my middle name, Leroy, and shorten it to Lee, sounded cool, but I'm glad I didn't. Olan is such a rare name for a person like myself, and it helps give me a distinct identity; and if you still think of me as Cotton Jones, that is fine, just know I'm really Olan L. Smith. Olan is a variation of the name Olaf and comes in various forms; Olan, Olaf, Olav, Olin, Olen, even Ollie, or Oliver.

Precarious: We live in a risky world. Perhaps no more precarious than others, but some more so. I grew up poor, but didn't know I was poor, and had a blast as a child, and I write about my childhood a lot. It was fun and I was rich with life, deprived in things but I had a grand time, plus I never equated poor with precarious.

Quickly: Nothing good ever comes quickly, except the sudden strike on my fishing line from a bass or other fish wanting a nibble. That was quick, wasn't it? There; then they were gone, and the bobbers is under the water and the line is heading away. Perhaps, I'm thinking of success. Success doesn't come over night, and you have to earn it. All those hours, months, years preparing for the big one to come and damn, you hang on for all you're worth, but don't forget to set the hook.

Rough: Some like it rough, get the jeep out onto the pastures and head off into the sunset, but you can't travel off-road forever, because sooner or later you're going to have to cross a river. At that point it is either backtrack to the main road and find a bridge, or build a bridge for you to drive you four wheeler across.

Shit: Tons of it all over the place, and unless you know how to process the shit in your life it is always going to stink up your life.

Tenderness: Tenderness is the act of being gentle or kind, but tender hands know how to caress the sensitive spots, those spots only you know about, but are very pleased to guide tender hands to, unless you like it rough; see R.

Unassuming: I want to think of myself as unassuming, modest, unpretentious, but as I age I find myself saying, "What the fuck, I don't care anymore what people think of me, I am what I am." One of the things I like about writing is I can be whoever I want to be, and if I'm the hero, so be it. After all, who wants to be in the rain all the time, right?

Vicious: I look out into this time of vicious leaders who demeaning people, gnarling their teeth at good citizens, and making jesters only a fool would make in any other time, and I wonder what has happened to goodness, truth, and honesty. Where have all the good leaders gone to allow such vicious, ravenous evil loose in the world?

Water: I think of water often, not just that I need to keep drinking it, but of silly things like the ratio of water to land is consistent to the ratio of water in our body to flesh. Or that we are living in water bags of flesh, or watching the movie "Spontaneous" where students of a class all start bursting like water balloons.

Xerox: I saw my first Xerox machine in the college library in 1973, and even then we were already talking about Xeroxing our butts, breasts, and genitalia; now what does that have say to about the mother of invention being necessity. Eh?

Yellow: One of my favorite books as a youth was "Old Yeller," a coming of age story about growing up in the 1860s. Yellow is the color of ripe corn, pears off of Grandpa's pear tree. Yellow is also the color of snow you don't want to use to make ice-cream out of, but is the perfect color to spell your name with in the snow.

Zillion: Means the whole bunch that I love you, the number of times I dreamed, the number of times I pecked letters out on the typewriter and computer keyboard, but a zillion is not forever, and if a lifetime ended at a zillion it would still be too short.