This Week in Word of the Day – 05/12/2013
spang \spang\, adverb:
directly, exactly: The bullet landed spang on target.
Thirteen seconds passed from the moment the man accidentally discharged the pistol and the realization that the bullet landed spang in his wilting friend’s Adam’s apple. Thirteen seconds is insignificant after 43 years on this planet. In that short time, he had only 20 heartbeats, his eyes only blinked once, and only three images, two sounds, and one smell would be stored in his long-term memory. Despite it’s statistical insignificance amidst a lifespan that would eventually stretch 75 years, the man never truly escaped those thirteen seconds.
logomachy \loh-GOM-uh-kee\, noun:
1. a dispute about or concerning words.
2. an argument or debate marked by the reckless or incorrect use of words; meaningless battle of words.
3. a game played with cards, each bearing one letter, with which words are formed.
He could remember when his father left the church because it was getting too conservative. He remembered the long, winding discussions that sharpened his logic. He remembered when his father said, “every good argument should never be about defending your ground, but by using the act of arguing to better understand why you believe what you believe.”
Now, after Fox News, two wars, Rush Limbaugh, small town life, and the Tea Party, his father’s opinions had hardened and it was rare that they enjoyed the clash of ideas or there was any bend to his world view. He spent more time dancing around the triggers that would upset his father and lead them down a ridiculous road of absurd, unfounded conspiracies or circular logomachy.
The ritual was gone and it was the only thing he truly missed from his childhood*.
* Well, that and his massive GI Joe aircraft carrier.
dais \DEY-is, DAHY-, deys\, noun:
a raised platform, as at the front of a room, for a lectern, throne, seats of honor, etc.
A bloom of nails was pinched between Clint’s lips as he hammered down a brace for the 8′x5′ dais slowly taking shape in the living room of his modest suburban house.
“Clint, honey,” Wendy called from the hall.
Clint spit the nails into his hand and sat the hammer down. He groaned silently as he stretched his back.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Clint finally replied. “We talked about this and we talked about this, but my mind is set. That boy – I don’t get him. He sits in that room and reads for five hours. Other kids, they are out there playing in the streets, playing video games together, doing what kids do. But my boy? He doesn’t talk to anyone, not really. He doesn’t talk to me, he doesn’t want to play catch, he doesn’t want a puppy. What kind of kid doesn’t want a puppy?”
“I know baby, but…” Wendy started.
“No! We aren’t arguing about this again! I don’t get that boy. I don’t know what he needs. I want to – I don’t know, love him, I guess. I want to be his father, but I just don’t…”
Clint sat back and wiped sweat from his brow. He couldn’t look back at his wife, so instead just gazed down at the half-finished project.
“He is weird,” Clint said. “He is different, he will never be normal. I get it. His life is hard, and it will always be hard. So, if he wants a throne. Goddamit, I am going to build him a throne.”
Wendy bent down behind Clint and kissed him on the back of his neck.
“Can I get you a beer?” Wendy whispered.
“Yeah, that would be great, actually.”
whangdoodle \HWANG-dood-l, WANG-\, noun:
a fanciful creature of undefined nature.
Little Trevor realized at the age of five that the whangdoodles he grew up with did not exist naturally inside this world. He was actually summoning them from his vivid imagination and that was why Trevor was treated so differently than other children his age.
“Mommy, is this why I am in jail?” he asked as he gazed up at the 12 foot high fence with razor wire at the top and a guard station looming nearby.
“It’s not jail, honey. It’s just a special place where you can be yourself.”
A place where Trevor and his whangdoodles couldn’t hurt anyone was what she meant.
As Trevor grew more comfortable with his control of the look, feel, behavior, and speech of the whangdoodles, Trevor became more assertive with his parents and the hundreds of guards that hoped to keep Trevor and his army trapped inside the facility.
The first death was Trevor’s father and it shocked the little boy into hysterical tears. Weeks went by without a whangdoodle appearance, but his imagination couldn’t be penned in forever.
The next three deaths came when Trevor grew tired of the medicine. It made his tummy hurt and gave him frightful dreams. He resisted, the whangdoodles emerged and would not allow the boy to be bullied.
Trevor’s mother announced the next morning they were all going on vacation to a lovely, little Pacific island.
“Will I be able to make friends there?” the boy asked.
His mother couldn’t answer with more than a quivering smile.
As the plane rumbled down the runway, Trevor knew, somehow, he would need the whangdoodles like never before.
aeolian \ee-OH-lee-uhn\, adjective:
1. (usually lowercase) of or caused by the wind; wind-blown.
2. pertaining to Aeolus, or to the winds in general.
Aeolian howls greeted the survivors climbing up from the cavernous depths of the bunker. The mess hall leaked dust at the seams as the storm battered the outside walls for hours at a time. It was not an ideal place for a meal, but the survivors needed to be near the Earth’s surface. They needed to hear the weather, to hope to be able to walk outside again, at least once more in their lives.
The Dancer stretched on the small stage built at the head of the mess hall as The Drummers settled in chairs beside her. The Dancer coughed violently and the survivors watched her with grim, worried frowns. The Dancer suffered, like so many others, from dust pneumonia. It was brutal and fatal and slow, but it didn’t stop The Dancer from performing every night for the 129 souls still holding out hope for a rescue.
The Dancer discretely wiped the muddy mucus from her lips, then nodded to the drummers. Her lungs would open up and feed oxygen to her fevered muscles. Her decaying joints would strain, but hold. Her mind, sleep-deprived and frenzied, would calm and focus. The body would endure, because it must. She was the only light that burned in this mass grave, and tonight, she would radiate brighter than a thousand suns.
snafu \sna-FOO, SNAF-oo\, noun:
1. a badly confused or ridiculously muddled situation: A ballot snafu in the election led to a recount.
1. Rare. in disorder; out of control; chaotic: a snafu scheme that simply won’t work.
verb:
1. Rare. to throw into disorder; muddle: Losing his passport snafued the whole vacation.
The young prince had no interest in war or military parades. He didn’t relish a future as the dictator of a third world nation, yet he knew he had to at least pretend to care about officer candidate school if he wanted to travel to America for college.
Yet, that hope evaporated when he mistook the accelerator for the emergency brake while trying to lead the squadron of tanks on a training maneuver. The small mistake quickly turned into a grand snafu when all twenty-three of the army’s refurbished Soviet T-80 battle tanks ended up mired in the marshes where they would forever remain since there was no vehicle capable of towing them out.
feminacy \FEM-uh-nuh-see\, noun:
feminine nature.
The ideal of feminacy settled in his mind during those lazy summer afternoons when his mother smoked on the front porch, trapped as the boy developed his skills as an exhaustive pseudo-intellectual blowhard.
Life slowed as she gazed out at the sunset and listened to his thoughts on love, comedy, storytelling and god. Especially god. He was already drifting away from religion and he could tell that it troubled her, yet they discussed without confrontation or judgement.
This tremendous strength to accept and support their growing differences resonated deeply with the boy. It guided his life decisions, the friends he would bring close to his heart, but also the women he would recognize as worthy of his adoration.
She quit smoking a few years later, he tumbled into the chaotic dissonance of his teenage years, yet the bond from those conversations on the front porch held. They became the standard for how he would raise his own boys, who were also becoming insufferable, pretentious, and beyond influence. It was a beautiful thing.
