Category Archives: B words

Chamber

Chamber: (n) a private room, typically a bedroom.

I remember the first time I heard the Beach Boys sing the song, I cried.

“There’s a room that I can go to tell my secrets to,

In my room…”

Or my chamber.

It was always very important to have a space with a door that would close, so I could separate myself from my fears, insecurities and those beyond the room who
wanted to hurt me.

I thought they wanted to hurt me.

It was many years before I realized they were equally as frightened–just using their criticism of me to boost their false bravado.

That’s the source of all meanness.

After all, the Germans were defeated in World War I, humiliated in the peace treaty that followed, and set out to find a “chamber” for their cause–where they could prove they were better than those around them. It became a chamber of horrors.

Having a room is a good thing.

Using it to get your head on straight is even better.

Leaving it is wise.

 

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix  

Challenge

Challenge: (n) something that puts us to a test

Things that challenge me often make others snicker.

Perhaps they try to be open-minded and kind, but they find my challenges to be silly. Not wanting to be left out of the game, I turn around and find their challenges equally as dopey.

When I was five years old, the biggest challenge in my life was swallowing pills. I could not do it. Everybody thought I was mentally
retarded. (That was back when you could use that term.)

Each person I knew tried to teach me how to swallow pills, and always started out with a grin of hope and ended with a grimace of despair. I think I was fifteen years old before I conquered pill-popping.

Now, when I was fifteen, my biggest challenge was to do a forward roll in high school. My body did not want to roll over the top of its head to end up flopping on its ass. (Imagine that.)

Once again, many people tried and many people failed.

I’ve always had the challenge of losing weight. So I take the precaution–when I get that sideways glance from people obviously expressing disapproval over my magnitude–to explain to them that I am in the middle of a diet.

It makes them feel good and sometimes I actually believe it myself.

 

 

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix  

Chalk

Chalk: (n) a soft white limestone used for blackboards

His first name was Page and his second was Unus. His parents apparently thought this was funny, because once Unus is translated from the
 Latin, his name became “Page One.”

I liked Page. He was odd.

Most kids in school knew he was odd, which disqualified him from consideration. He was highly intelligent, which is the booby prize often given to odd people. Page had quirks.

Page loved to eat cold kidney beans out of a can.

He loved to have crab apple fights in his backyard.

But he hated the sound of squeaky chalk on a blackboard. It made him crazy–not fake, “pretending to be upset” crazy. No, his blood pressure went up, his face turned red, and he gripped the sides of his wooden schoolroom desk as if he were going to tear it apart.

We had one teacher who always had squeaky chalk. I don’t know if it was the cheap stuff or the expensive–but every time he wrote on the blackboard, there was an accompanying atonal melody of squeaking which most of the class ignored.

Except for Page and me–and only me because I was concerned about Page.

One day in the midst of a particularly elongated session of trying to solve a problem on the board with the squeaking chalk, Page got up from his seat, quietly walked to the front of the room, took the chalk from the teacher’s hand and threw it against the wall, breaking it into several pieces. He turned to the class and said, “Doesn’t that sound drive you crazy?”

He was met with a roomful of blank faces.

The teacher took him to the principal’s office, where he received a lecture on self-control and was given in-school suspension for five days. During his stretch for the crime, I saw him one day on his way to the cafeteria. He was smiling.

I was confused. Why would Page be so happy about his punishment? Then I realized.

No squeaky chalk.

 

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix  

Chalice

Chalice: (n) a large cup or goblet

Every once in a while, I fancy myself a flitting twit of noble extraction who was accidentally birthed in Central Ohio due to a curse of a witch
with an axe to grind.

This doesn’t happen very often or my communiques would be coming from a sanitarium.

But there is a nasty part of my soul that wants to be superior.

I want to be a king instead of a serf.

I want to drink out of a chalice instead of a cup.

I want to have whole cooked birds placed in front of me so I can peruse where to dive in to the crunchy brown skin and begin to gorge myself.

I want to have the fanciest car in the parking lot.

I want to have an outfit that someone recognizes as an “original” from Italy.

I want to be viewed as a “cut above”–the rib-eye, soft and moist, near the heart of the beast.

I desire that the focus be placed upon me and all spotlights trained in my direction.

I find myself in a twist of obnoxious pretense, grabbing my chalice, bedecked with jewels, and sipping wine that was pressed only by the feet of virgin maidens.

I want to be special.

I want to be revered.

I want my glorious chalice of appreciation.

And then…

My friend walks in the door and tells me I have my shirt on backwards.

I realize God has placed me where I need be.

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix  

Chairperson

Chairperson: (n) a chairman or chairwoman (used as a neutral alternative).

Words often foretell the temperament of the people around us and what they are going to demand to appease their sense of self-righteousness.

For instance, if I go to church and hear someone proclaim themselves to be a “sinner saved by grace,” I know for certain they will want me to
confess myself a sinner and to seek the magnificent grace advertised.

Likewise, when I hear someone use the term “chairperson,” I know two things to be true:

  1. They are under the misguided notion that a committee can agree to do anything but produce more red tape.
  2. And since they are using the “neutral” form of the word instead of “chairman,” I can assume they’re going to be pretty pissy.

Red tape and pissy.

That is usually my cue to suddenly remember that I left my keys in the car, find them in my pocket, climb in, start it up and go home.

 

 

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix  

Chair

Chair: (n) separate seat for one person

I was five years old the first time someone referred to me as “fat.” It came off the lips of Aunt Pruney-Face Fussypants. (I don’t recall her real
 name so I’m working off stage directions.)

She whispered to my mother, “Don’t let him sit in that chair. He’s too fat. He might break it.”

I don’t know if I was stunned, mystified, humiliated or defiant, but I went over and sat down in the chair anyway–just to prove that it would embrace me from the bottom up.

It held its ground.

Yet over the years, certain chairs have gone “snap, crackle and pop” when introduced to my backside. So I hbave developed the mystical ability to peer at a piece of furniture, determining its width and sturdiness. I avoid bargain-basement furniture, realizing that it’s only suited for an anorexic market.

Chairs are problematic when you’re large.

Large is problematic because you’re always looking for a chair.

Aye–there’s the rub.

So even though I have encountered tens of thousands of seating units on my journey, many had to be rejected by my prejudice toward their outward appearance.

 

 

 

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix  

Chain Smoke

Chain smoke: (v) to smoke continually, especially by lighting a new cigarette from the butt of the last one smoked

I never saw my dad smoke a chain. Yet this is what my nine-year-old mind tried to envision when my mother yelled at him and told him he
was nothing but a “damn chain smoker.”

I was aware that my father smoked cigarettes. Actually, he rolled his own. I think he saw it in a movie Western and thought it was cool, manly, and decided to take it up as a practice.

So he bought the tobacco, the papers and pretended he was the Marlboro Man.

He smoked continually. After the passing of time, he mainly smoked so he could keep from coughing. Yes–the absence of the smoke filling his lungs was such a shock to his system that he desperately needed to inhale the tobacco to make him feel normal again. For every morning in our home began with a coughing fit, lasting about twenty minutes.

I knew it was over when the smell of cigarette came floating through the house and I arose from my bed, and walked to stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, around the little speckles of my papa’s spittle.

I was the son of a smoker who decided never to smoke.

I was the son of a mother who spent a lot of time bitching, only driving her husband to more rolling and lighting.

 

Smoking is a vice.

Chain smoking is committing suicide–one drag at a time.

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix  

Chain Reaction

Chain reaction: (n) a series of events, each caused by the previous one.

I have never found a pear on an apple tree. This seems like a trivial statement. But you see, there are many things in nature which we accept
as true, but never apply them to our personal lives.

For example:

I’ve never received respect by being mean. Fear, perhaps–but never respect.

I’ve never been productive by being timid.

I’ve never achieved good romance by being selfish.

I’ve never acquired money by sitting on my treasure chest, guarding it from thieves.

Life is filled with chain reactions. It is not limited to the elements becoming compounds. It includes the ability to look inside yourself and see the fodder that fosters failure and call out the standards that salute success.

Life is a chain reaction.

I have boarded a bus in the middle of downtown America–a vehicle full of sullen, preoccupied people–greeted the bus driver with a smile, kindly addressed one or two people nearby, and in no time at all, a chain reaction went through the bus, and conversation ensued.

I am powerful.

You are powerful.

I can view my life as a catalyst for creativity, or I can become a whiny, cautionary voice of worry and concern. The choice is mine. But either way, there will be a chain reaction.

It’s not so much that if a bear farts in the woods of Minnesota, rain falls in Brazil–but rather, if a bear farts in the woods of Minnesota, is he conscientious enough to excuse himself so the squirrels don’t get cranky and have a bad day?

 

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix  

Chain

Chain: (n) a sequence of items of the same type forming a line

“A chain is as strong as its weakest link.”

That little piece of platitude is tossed off all the time. It’s really quite arrogant.

In other words, folks never speak this principle when referring to themselves. No, it’s always some sort of derogatory comment about the
 weakness of others.

But in measuring the value of your chain, it’s always a good idea to realize that there are different types of weakness.

For instance, being tough and inflexible can be a great weakness if you’re trying to establish a tender relationship.

Touting your sexual prowess to a room full of bored hearers is equally annoying and comical.

Establishing the superiority of one gender over another is the propagation of ugly myths.

There is a reason that some things link. We don’t link together simply because “we’re all strong” and able to handle equal burdens. We usually link together because one of us feels the need for another, and the other requires our presence.

We err when we try for perfection.

No one likes perfect.

No one believes in it.

We appreciate it when weakness is acknowledged instead of denied. This allows us to build up the chain, and gives an opportunity to the link–to establish fortitude.

 

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix  

Chagrin

Chagrin: (n) distress or embarrassment at having failed or been humiliated.

Life waits around, waiting for human beings to express disappointment so it can squash them like that bug you found in your tent during the
 campout.

Even though we contend that a certain amount of disappointment, embarrassment, disgust or sadness is predictable for certain occasions, those who indulge themselves in such a luxury often find that they are left out of the next flow of human activity.

You can be disappointed, but no one really cares.

It’s not because they’re uncaring–it’s because deep in their hearts, each one of us knows that disappointment and embarrassment are useless emotions which must be dispelled as quickly as possible, lest they explode and destroy our will to live.

So when we see this in other people, there is a small part of us that wants to be sympathetic and a huge part that wants to run away in terror.

So beware of the instinct to share your heart if that emotional revelation is filled with chagrin–because even though we all suffer slings and arrows, most of us have learned the wisdom of ducking.

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix