After silence

I love words.

Sometimes I love words so much that I get excited about saying something that’s really not exciting.

Today I texted a friend of mine and wrote the following: “If you want to play hooky and drive to Milwaukee I’ll be your navigator extraodinaire.”

Then I spent the five minutes after that spinning those words around, adding new ones, and wondering what I could do with that one line that came out so much better than I expected when I put my thumbs to the phone screen.

And then I stopped and realized what I was doing and laughed. (Somebody once said, “Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can.” I’ve followed that advice closely and have even burned some extra calories doing it. I’d recommend it to all.)

It reminded me of the time in college when I had to write a “nonsensical poem” for a creative writing class. For three days I battled with words and paired them together, mis-matching verbs and nouns and phrases until it was a tongue-twister even I could barely say.

My two favorite lines from that poem still echo in my head on occasion: “Streams overflow with groups of red scissors,” and, “to the bebop and bang of a pair of blue jeans.” My friends got very tired of me inserting those lines into everyday conversation.

But I can’t help it! I love words! I love words so much that when I can’t find the exact right ones combined to express or describe or document, I sometimes decide not to bother trying. Sorry about that. I’ll work on it.

Meantime, maybe I’ll go to Milwaukee.