Category Archives: A words

Acrophobia

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAcrophobia: (n.) extreme or irrational fear of heights

It has to be that scene in the movie, Cliffhanger.

THAT particular vision–a woman suspended in mid-air, thousands of feet above the earth, only prevented from falling by a hand extended to her, as the glove on her fingers gradually begins to slip away and you realize she is about to tumble to her death.

If you are able to watch that scene without turning away, you might be free of acrophobia. Matter of fact, it would be an excellent way to diagnose the condition.

That was when I realized that I must be a bit acrophobic. For me, that little piece of the movie was unwatchable. It’s not so much that I’m afraid of falling or even hitting the rocks below. Certainly my body would grant me the mercy of a heart attack before I reached the “stoneful” end. It’s just the idea of having to prepare for my upcoming plummet by pausing for a moment to think about it, terrorizing myself.

I don’t like to stand too near the edge of a cliff. Now, I don’t remember feeling this way as a youngster, even though growing up in Ohio, there were not many a precipice. But somewhere along the line I became leery, and even queasy, about gazing off the edge of some high-mounted place, to the tiny confines below.

I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of whatsoever. I just don’t like to be around people who want to flaunt their “bravery on the edge.” You know what I mean–those folks who stand on one foot on the ledge of a building. Or the guy who walks across the rope over the Grand Canyon, while praying. I’m sure I would be praying, too, but I think I would like to put my supplications to less of a test.

Acrophobia is real. But I do recall, if I am not incorrect, that there are two fears we are born with: the fear of abandonment and a fear of falling.

So maybe those people who DON’T have acrophobia are aliens … and should be taken to Area 51 for further study.

Acronym

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAcronym: (n.) a word formed from the first letters of other words. e.g.: radar, laser

I think you have to go back to the old rotary phone. It used to be really fun to come up with acronyms  by using your telephone number, looking at the letters that were available under each numeral and coming up with a spelling for your company or organization.

Acronyms used to be so popular. It was a way of remembering answers for tests. You would select an acronym, and each letter would represent an answer for your test, and the word would stimulate your memory for the answer. (As you can see, it’s actually easier to apply than to explain…)

For a while, preachers used acronyms a lot to illustrate their sermons in an attempt to get people to remember the points past the parking lot, to where they picked up the box of chicken, to go home and watch football.

Then somewhere along the line they became hokey. They became laughable.

I think it’s based around what I refer to as my “layer theory:”

  • Things remain cool as long as cool people are doing them. it doesn’t really matter WHAT they do–just that people we have decided are really superb and special do them.
  • Then the friends of those cool people start doing the trend, creating a second layer. It still remains cool at that point, but a whole lot more common.
  • At that point, the relatives of the friends of the cool people start putting into practice this popular gizmo. Then it becomes so average and everyday that we all kind of smile when somebody does it, but we’re really hoping that soon it will stop.
  • Finally, the enemies of the relatives of the friends of the cool people start picking up on the practice. At this point, all the comedians in the country, all the sane individuals, and everybody who is sick to death of the new idea that has now become like used Kleenex, begin to mock and make fun of what was once considered to be the hippest thing in the world.

It is an American evolution–and acronyms are very near the point of being bombarded.

So if you have an acronym you still want to put forth, do it very quickly–and be prepared to remove it with just as much haste. Because I think we’re really on the verge of acronyms becoming the butt of every joke:

B.U.T.T.– Better Understand Tomorrow’s Trend.

Acrobat

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAcrobat: (n.) an entertainer who performs gymnastic feats.

I had a flash-back.

When I was in high school, so many bronze ages ago, it was mandatory to take two years of physical education. I put them off until my junior and senior years. (I don’t know if I was hoping for a lazy state legislature to repeal the law, or perhaps that the gymnasium would collapse from the onslaught of a Midwest tornado, but I delayed.)

I was a big, fat boy. I liked to play sports until it became obvious that it was exercise. Does that make sense? In other words, if you wanted to go out and throw the football around or shoot some hoops, I was there. But if you were gonna line up and purposefully use your muscles in a way that produced exertion and perspiration with no immediate pay-off of sinking a basket or tackling a friend, well … I was rather non-enthusiatic.

ESPECIALLY during the six-week period of physical education when we did gymnastics.

I was no acrobat. I was the kind of person that if I slipped and fell down a hill, it actually appeared that there was a person falling uncontrollably down the hill, as opposed to gracefully tumbling and landing on my feet. Any motion that I took towards the ground ended up in a splat instead of a forward roll.

I hated it.

I tried to get out of it by insisting that my parents were too poor to afford my gym clothes. I even tricked my mom into giving me a note to give to the instructor, telling him that I was physically unable to perform the feats.

It was unsuccessful. Amazingly, these small-town educators saw through my ploys.

The most embarrassing part of it was the fact that there was no privacy. When it was time to tumble, we formed a line which ran in a perpetual circle, so that each person could come and tumble on the mat, regain his feet, and get back into line to do it again, until everybody had done at least FOUR of them.

Some guys were just great. They looked like human Slinkeys. I, on the other hand, looked like play-dough hitting the sidewalk on a very hot day. Rather than rolling, I kind of just spread out all over the mat.

So when I regained my feet, hearing the titters of my friends, I hung back in the line, hoping the teacher did not notice how many forward rolls I had accomplished before the whistle would blow for the next horror. Unfortunately, he preferred to wait until the end, leading me to believe I had pulled off my scam, making me perform my last two somersaults back-to-back, with the whole class reviewing, as if they were East German judges at the Olympics.

Honestly, as I retell this, I am not quite sure how I survived it without resorting to some sort of self-mutilation or abuse of my fellow-students.

But when I see the word acrobat, I have a mingling of great admiration and a chill that goes down my spine, remembering that torturous hour spent, for a six-week period, when my school insisted that I try to take my enormous body and  imitate a thirteen-year-old female gymnast.

Even though I could never approve and am certainly horrified when I hear about school shootings–when someone walks into his classroom and guns everybody down–honestly, I might be a little sympathetic if I found out it was a big fat kid and it was a Phys Ed class during the six weeks … of gymnastics.

Acrimonious

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAcrimonious: (adj.) typically in reference to speech or debate, angry and bitter: e.g. an acrimonious debate about wages.

About a mile-and-a-half outside our little town of fifteen hundred souls, there was a location set aside, commonly referred to as “the city dump.”

I’m not so sure those places exist anymore–whether small towns have them. I think we now use landfills, which are similar but much larger.

But about once every three or four months, our family would load up a small trailer and head out to the city dump to get rid of everything that had somehow become displeasing to us.

My mother was always concerned about taking us children out there because we might step on a nail, get lockjaw and die. But I always pleaded to go on the journey because it was a fascinating destination. There was always just a little bit of fire burning close by, with some of the dumped materials ablaze.

And it was remarkable how we could back up our trailer, disconnect it, tip it up, and dump our useless bullcrap into the pile, then re-hook the trailer and drive away with no fear or burden. The trip to the dump was always bumpy, and the car would pull, tugging the rejected items behind us. But the trip back was so much lighter.

That’s the way I feel about “acrimonious.”

Do we ever know if our discussions with one another are truly pure and on point? We may just have failed to go to the garbage heap before we began to discuss.

After all, there’s so much crap that builds up inside us in the process of one day:

  • So many disappointments covered up with a smile.
  • So many dreams we had that we now sidestep because they failed to bear evidence.
  • So much frustration about being told to wait, when patience seems so useless.

And therefore, the least little thing can set us off, and rather than dumping our trash where it belongs, we do it right in the middle of the town square–to the alarm and disdain of the citizens.

I’m not so sure that any Republican or Democrat really knows what they think on ANY issue. They are too busy being acrimonious over old battles.

So even though I was sometimes sad when we threw things away at the city dump because I had developed a fondness for them in their decaying state, I can’t tell you that I missed them or felt any absence whatsoever.

Sometimes we just need to dump before we come back and interact.

If we don’t, we end up scraping our garbage onto somebody else’s plate.

Acrid

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acrid: (adj.) an irritatingly strong and unpleasant taste or smell

I guess we universally say something isn’t to our taste, but I’ve never heard anyone say it’s not to their smell.

Am I right?

So is it possible that folks who love jalapenos and maybe will even eat grasshoppers, still universally despise the smell of crap?

For there ARE cultures which devour things that we would never eat, but I’ve never seen any place in the world where certain odors are tolerated.

(Well, take that back. There is the Midwest, where people drive into their small towns and seem to accept the air of cow manure permeating the surroundings. But even there, if you look deeply into their eyes, most of them seem to reflect a wish that the cows would poop elsewhere…)

And there ARE certain things we will tolerate and eat and not call them “acrid” because we’re trying to impress. For instance, I have never been a drinker of alcohol. Yet if I’m in Wisconsin and someone offers me a beer they’ve made in their basement (which, by the way, SHOULD be frightening enough) I feel compelled to take a drink and somehow or another come up with an approving phrase about the liqueur. They usually know very quickly that I don’t know what I’m talking about, but ignore that in deference to my politeness.

I remember the first time I was out on a date with a girl, very early in my years, and I realized that she was willing to kiss me–repeatedly.  But in the process of receiving THAT very pleasant experience, I had to reconnoiter her breath, which was a bit … acrid.

I was torn. Two sensations tugging at my soul–the pleasure of appreciating a woman’s lips and a revulsion in my gut which was suggesting we move further away from the attacking stench.

It is amazing what we will accept if we feel the results are to our benefit.

I was watching a show last night on TV. Young women were trying to lose weight by drinking green, slimy slushes to trim off the pounds. What struck me was that these lovely ladies will probably not want to drink this concoction the rest of their lives, and that we as a human race, have not found a way to produce good-tasting food that doesn’t kill us.

  • Why can’t we have peanut butter that’s low in calories?
  • Why not a beef steak that has the nutrition of broccoli?

This might be more beneficial than curing cancer. But we’re going to continue to eat and smell acrid things and pretend they’re good for us, knowing that in a moment of slight weakness, we will run away.

Acrid is NOT in the eye, the taste buds, nor the nose of the beholder. It’s pretty universal.

I guess it’s just the common conclusion to almost everything.

Some people just lie better.

Acre

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAcre: (n.) a unit of land area equal to 4,840 square yards

I don’t use the word “acre” much.

I once had a house near the lake which sat on one-and-a-half acres–considered to be a lot of land in its location.

Of course, it’s NOTHING in comparison to forty acres and a mule. That’s what each emancipated slave was promised upon leaving the plantation to begin a life of freedom. (Most of them are still waiting.)

It did make me think… forty acres are a LOT of turf. But I suppose if you had a family of four or five people, it would take that much land to plant enough crops to sustain one through the year.

My family owned a farm just outside our little town which was about four or five acres. (My brother recently described it as a “forty acre farm,” but I am quite sure that was embellishment  … or land envy.) But I do remember that the four or five acres was also quite expansive–since NONE of us knew how to farm, clear the terrain or maintain the surroundings.

I once thought I might like to be a land-owner, or baron. But after owning a home for a certain length of time and wondering if every creak would turn into a crimp, draining my bank account, I am not quite so eager to be an “acre taker.”

As I travel across the country, I drive by fields which are impeccably maintained by intelligent farmers who provide the sustenance for our country–and probably enough surplus to feed the whole world, if such a notion ever popped into our minds. Such magnificent technicians these farmers must be!

Because I remember–when my family tried to grow strawberries on about a half an acre, the sheer brute force of nature, in the form of weeds, pestilence and poor weather conditions, turned our little crop into scrub brush instead of quarts and quarts of blessing.

I am so glad there are people who understand “acre,” so that I can benefit from their wisdom … and buy my strawberries in containers at the store.

I hope someday I can assist them in some wonderful way. Maybe I could write an essay on planting or harvesting.

Acquit

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acquit: (v.) 1. to free someone from a criminal charge by a verdict of not guilty 2. to conduct oneself or perform in a specified way: e.g. he needs to acquit himself well.

The word “acquit” makes me flash back to the O. J. Simpson trial in the 1990’s. Of course, if I was much younger, that might not be the case. But the memory of Johnnie Cochran saying, “If it don’t fit, you must acquit” immediately popped into my mind with the revelation of this day’s word.

To freshen your memory, the statement was made in relationship to a bloody glove discovered at the crime scene, which was placed on Mr. Simpson’s hand during the trial and seemingly was ill-fitted.

I guess that’s why the word “acquit” is an uneasy concept for me. I have to admit when I occasionally think about the idea of life after death, I don’t envision myself to be gloriously saved so much as I think of being “acquitted” by a really slick lawyer.

So after the experience with what they referred to as “the trial of the century” with O. J. Simpson, the word “acquit” leaves me a bit cold. What it connotes to me is that somehow or another, someone escaped responsibility due to a lack of evidence.

What I would hope for myself is that I would bring the evidence of my strengths AND weaknesses to the forefront BEFORE others prosecute me, making it clear that I am a mysterious balance between bungle and blessing.

Is that so hard to do? I guess it is. I would assume that our “jungle instinct” keeps us from admitting our faults, and instead, praying for an acquittal.

But of course, the danger of being acquitted is that unless you start walking the straight and narrow, you’re liable to slide off the path AGAIN–to get caught and this time, not have your fancy lawyer around anymore.

Thus the story of “The Juice.”

I think I’m going to work on being candid instead of counting on twelve people in a box deciding I’m not guilty.

Yes, that seems wiser.

Acquire

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acquire: (v.) 1. to buy or obtain 2. to learn or develop 3. something one comes to enjoy through experience: e.g.an acquired taste

When I was moving out of my house to go on the road and realized that I needed to get my life reduced to a suitcase and a shave kit, I was immediately struck by how much STUFF I had acquired.

“Acquiring” is not the accumulation of assets. Often it is brought about by a fear of losing or a lack of assessing.

For instance, I had things in my closet which had no power for my existence. Worse, I did not remember where they came from or why I had acquired them in the first place. Yet they collected space.

It was bizarre. In a weird sense, I realized that from the moment of my birth, I was always trying to expand my three square feet of human location to bigger and bigger proportions, perhaps in order to tout my value.

After all, if you live in a 5,000-square-foot house and it is chock-full of things you’ve acquired, doesn’t that make you more important? It shouts that you are NOT a person toting a backpack or pushing a shopping cart through a park to your favorite bench. Rather, you are a respectable sort–one who possesses many different knickknacks, most of which are completely irrelevant.

It really gave me pause for thought. What DO I want to acquire?

What immediately popped into my mind was “experience.” But experience is overrated if it does not make us more flexible individuals.

I might want to acquire friendships. But actually, most of our friends are really acquaintances. Candidly, an acquaintance is someone who tells you that you look nice. A friend is someone who knows it’s nice to tell you when you look bad. So I guess I DO want to acquire friends. But how many of those will we be fortunate enough to have?

It reminds me of an old proverb: “With all your getting of knowledge, acquire wisdom.”

And what IS wisdom? Wisdom is knowing the real reason you do things–without having to make up an excuse on the fly;. Yeah, I guess THAT’S what I want to acquire.

But not too much ..,. just in case I have to move again.

Acquiescent

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAcquiescent: (adj.) a person who is ready to accept something without protest or to do what someone else wants: e.g. the unions were acquiescent and there was no overt conflict.

I sat and stared at that word for at least ten minutes.

I tried to imagine a climate or situation where being acquiescent had completely positive overtones. I understand that we believe it does.

For instance, I remember that when I had teenage sons I often wanted them to be acquiescent. But looking back on it now that they are all grown, I see that their lack of compliance was often the signal of a creative explosion within them which was NOT grounded in rebellions, but rather, was ordained by the priest of inspiration.

  • Is it possible to be acquiescent and be strong?
  • How about acquiescent and driven?
  • Acquiescent and earth-changing?
  • Acquiescent and a true son of God?

I just don’t know.

Certainly there are times when I want to be the peace giver and the peace provider for situations which are rife with volatility. But actually, these occasions are so rare that it’s barely worth bringing up. Most of the time there needs to be a strength that is baptized in mercy, anointed with resolve and willing to express grace.

But that’s not really acquiescent, now, is it?

When I think of acquiescent, I think of a span of nearly forty years in this country–from 1820 to 1860–when political men of good will allowed for slavery to continue in an attempt to keep everything running on an even keel and to avoid the horror of conflict and war. They compromised. They allowed a whole generation of black Americans to be born, to live, to suffer and die in chains in order to maintain an amiable, uneasy peace.

It was not destined to be.

There you go. Acquiescence only works when we are destined to give in to an inevitable truth. To give in to a lie in order to prevent upheaval is not acquiescence.

It’s just cowardly.

 

Acquaint

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

  Acquaint: (v.) to make someone aware of or familiar with: e.g. “let me acquaint you with your new staff.”

Aware. Familiar.

There are so many forces at work, trying to snatch my awareness and force me to become familiar with their rendition of the truth or their innovative marketing scheme.

I am in danger of becoming a red rubber ball, bouncing among a playground full of childish participants, who view me merely as a tool of their game.

It is up to me to acquaint myself with the things in life that enrich the possibility for optimism, without turning me into a silly bird flying in every direction, chasing sunbeams.

I need to believe without ignoring my reality. How do you do that?

I must become aware of good hues, while familiarizing myself with darker tints. If I mingle the two, I can become pragmatic AND pursue my portion of the solution instead of rallying to the rear of the naysayers:

  • I will acquaint myself with the beauty of a crooning sparrow. These creatures beckon the beginning of a new day.
  • I will acquaint myself with the homeless people in my community, who would revel in receiving my dollar bill instead of me eating unnecessary calories from the convenience store treat.
  • I will acquaint myself with music of all types instead of taking sides on tunes and ridiculing those choices that are not found on my I-pod.
  • I will acquaint myself with traditions that have been the salvation of many a soul, instead of finding fault with the numerous silly attempts they often make to share their testimony.
  • I will acquaint myself with the beauty and power of both political parties and astound the world around me by pointing out the better moments of each.
  • I will acquaint myself with the God I discover in nature instead of somehow or another bowing down to nature AS God.
  • I will acquaint myself with the gentleness of touching a human hand instead of pawing at life, grabbing on for satisfaction.

I will become aware. I will familiarize myself with truth.

Yes, I will acquaint myself with what makes me free.

I will acquaint myself with you–without asking you to become me.