Crest

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crest: (n) the highest part of a hill or mountain range; summit.

Somewhere between self-deception and self-motivation lies reality.

Of course, we’re no good when we’re lying about our well-being, pretending we’re something we’re not. We can become very obnoxious, making proclamations that slip away nearly as quickly as they’re spoken.

I think the problem may dwell in one area:

Life is not a mountain—it is a staircase.

If life were a mountain, we would continue to look above us and realize how much more we must accomplish, and honestly, become despaired with the task.

Here is why I believe life is a staircase:

About every ten steps of climbing, there’s a landing.

Take a minute. Catch your breath. Look where you’ve come from. Don’t wait until you get to the top.

I will decide where the crest is.

Every single day, I will determine the quality of my endeavor and the victory in my effort.

Mountain climbing is not only dangerous but offers very few plateaus for celebration.

I (and probably you, too) am human. We need many victories to motivate our continued climb. Without this, we can grow very weary in our well-doing, losing our grip on the rock above our heads, and fall to our failure, dashing our hopes on the rocks beneath.

Life is not a mountain. It is a staircase.

Unfortunately, it is not an escalator. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

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Crescent

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crescent: (adj) a shape resembling a segment of a ring tapering to points at the ends.

We may have just discovered one of the great ways to distinguish how people think.

Take a moment.

Relax.

Free your mind of all unnecessary information, including trying to recall the passwords to your Internet programs.

Now listen to this word and tell me what you think of immediately:

Crescent

If you are an extremely intellectual, political, religious or topical person, you thought of the crescent moon, in reference to the Muslim faith and problems in the Middle East.

If you’re like me, you probably thought of crescent rolls with lots of butter at Thanksgiving.

 

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Crescendo

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crescendo: (n) a gradual, steady increase in loudness or force.

I do realize there’s a danger in over-analyzing things. It can become tedious, if not obnoxious. Yet I will tell you—life becomes much simpler when you first realize it’s supposed to be simple, and then you start looking for the parallels that dwell behind every experience and lurk beneath each rock.

Over the years I have played my share of music.

Some people have even accused me of being a musician.

I’ve written songs and I’ve composed about eight symphonies (though Mozart and Beethoven shouldn’t be worried about their day jobs.)

Music has taught me a lot.

That’s not a very profound statement, but once again—simple.

Music knows what the key is meant to be in every situation.

It finds a melody, so some sensibility can be mustered for the hearer.

It certainly acknowledges the need for harmony.

And it has a great desire to strike a chord of commonality among us.

But never does music teach us anything more than it does with the crescendo.

Some people live their lives full out, loud, always punctuating their crescendo to the maximum. Then when they need to say something essential or shout out a truth, no one listens because they are always blaring and trumpeting their feelings.

The wisdom of music is to start your piece quietly and build.

Let’s be honest—if the audience doesn’t want to hear the song or doesn’t prefer the tunefulness of it, playing it more loudly does not achieve much of anything. But if you can acquaint all those around you with a theme they really embrace, by the time you get to the finale, you can generate a crescendo that triumphs the message and the music to the climax.

I used to be of a mindset that the louder I said something, the more emphatic and powerful it became. But I just ended up in a room with a bunch of fellow bellowers, shouting over the top of one another.

I shall never forget the night I was playing a concert, and the band that was on right before our troupe closed out with a screaming anthem, leaving the audience leaping to its feet, applauding wildly.

I realized there was no way to top that, so I looked for a bottom. I took the stage with just my guitarist and sang our sweetest, most childlike ballad. By the time I finished, the attention was mine. If I had desired, I could have manufactured my own crescendo. There was no hurry. It wasn’t a competition.

Turn down the noise.

First in your own mind—your own twitter—and then patiently let it all tone down around you.

Take a deep breath, pick your moment, make sure it’s timely…

CRESCENDO.

 

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Crept

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crept: (v) to move slowly or with great stealth

Lying quietly on my bed in the darkened room, I allowed fear to enter my heart.

It was all so foolish.

I was suddenly overtaken by an exaggerated sense of my mortality. It reminded me of the time I was a nine-year-old boy and overheard someone say that a patient in a hospital had died from swallowing his tongue.

I didn’t know you could swallow your tongue

But all that night I kept waking up, heart pounding, convinced that my tongue had crept down my throat and was trying to enter my stomach.

Although awareness of pending difficulties or threatening illnesses is common, it is not good for us to allow the apprehensions that have crept into our hearts to sneak into our thoughts and manipulate our actions.

Lying there on the bed, I tried to rebuke myself, but still found that when I closed my eyes, visions of my own demise persisted. And even when I dozed, my dreams were determined to become nightmares.

We are silly. I am Chief of Silly.

But once evil has crept into our lives, there has to be a ceremony—a exorcism—from all such darkness.

 

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Crepe Paper

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crepe paper: thin, densely wrinkled paper used for decoration

Imagine my shock.

All through my growing up years (which apparently are still continuing) I thought that crepe paper was cool.

Matter of fact, in my small-town-ism, it was the symbol of a party—the true essence of decorations, and proof that something special was about to happen.

It was never bought for common meals or everyday opportunities.

Crepe paper was festive

It could be strewn about a room, and in no time at all, depending on the color scheme, you had a thematic flow in your pavilion.

I loved crepe paper.

Don’t get me wrong—I was still a guy. I didn’t hang it around my bedroom. But I remember that if I walked into a hall and crepe paper was hanging everywhere, or for instance, on July 4th, when the windows of the town stores would be decorated with red, white and blue crepe paper, I got get a chill down my spine. Patriotic goose bumps.

So imagine my shock when I got much older and we were planning a very special party. A committee was meeting to discuss decorations, and I mentioned the purchase of crepe paper. Two of the members immediately scoffed, one saying, “We can certainly do better than that,” and the other retorting, “What do you think this is? A kid’s birthday party?”

I was simultaneously baffled, heartbroken, offended, and at a loss for words.

I quickly glanced around the room for a supporter or two, and although I suspected there were a couple of silent crepe paper lovers, no one piped up to its defense.

So plans were made minus the use of foolish, meaningless and childish crepe paper.

Matter of fact, later on in the evening, there were a couple of times when I was sure people were having a laugh behind my back at my backwoods suggestion.

Yet when it came time for the actual extravaganza, and all the flower arrangements were placed and the cloth bunting was put around the room, everyone was dissatisfied.

“It doesn’t look like anything’s going on,” said one fellow.

A half an hour later, they walked in, carrying big bags filled with crepe paper of every color. We all took one roll, went to our own selected space and decorated it.

It was amazing how nice the crepe paper made the other decorations look.

 

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Creole

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Creole: (n) a person born in Louisiana but of usually French ancestry.

Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of leaps into quicksand, with the excitement coming from each escape from foolishness.

Would any of us truly have a reason for being if we weren’t finding creative ways to correct our mistakes?

For a very brief time in my life, I thought that because I possessed faith, it was my responsibility to infuse it into others. This misconception led me to make a brief missionary trip to the country of Haiti. Never has one small nation been so inundated with religious propaganda and promises of eternal life with so little prospect for earthly sustenance. Yet I decided to add my own drivel to the propagated myth. I arrived in Haiti convinced that if I preached the Gospel, I could save souls. It didn’t occur to me that there were actually people linked to those souls.

People who got hungry.

People who needed love.

People who valued romance.

People who just thought, felt and dreamed about “people things.”

I was in the middle of my third little sermon in an adobe building, in front of a packed house—eager faces who had obviously been told by their leadership that the arrival of white people from America always offered the possibility of financial relief.

The language was Creole.

I did not take the time to learn the tongue, but over the several days that I had been there, I picked up a word here and there—maybe even a phrase.

I suddenly noticed that my translator, who had a grin foretelling of sin, was not exactly sharing what I was saying to the congregation.

So after I finished my teaching, I cornered him and asked him what he was doing. Never dropping his smile, he looked me right in the eyes and said, “You come from a country where your biggest concern is getting too fat. You are visiting a country where our biggest concern is staying alive. Sometimes you say dumb things that would be offensive, and I just find happier ways to translate them.”

A chill went down my spine. Even though I believed myself to be a plain-spoken individual who always wanted to hear the truth, I kind of wished he’d lied to me.

But I’m glad he didn’t—because he made it clear that my preaching could not be eaten and my Bible verses didn’t provide warmth; that even though I might have good intentions, my efforts were worthless to the needy.

That day I started trying to learn some of the Creole language.

It was literally the least I could do.

 

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Crème

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crème: (n) cream

Sometimes I foolishly allow myself to get on a jag of discovering correct grammar, proper sentence structure, and believe it or not, accurate spelling.

In the midst of this pursuit, I occasionally stumble on a word that has an old-time spelling and a new-fangled spelling without any particular consensus on which one is definitively correct.

Idiot that I occasionally am, I adopt the unusual spelling or pronunciation, thinking it makes me a trifle uptown or high-falutin’.

The result is always the same.

All the people who do not share my predilection for a historical study of the English language—etymology—immediately wonder why in the hell I use the word etymology when I wasn’t mentioning insects.

I know they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I am positive I have discovered some nugget of personal treasure which I am offering in order to seem expansive.

But inevitably, I’ll be corrected—rudely.

In one of my novels I wrote that my character requested “coffee and crème.”

First, my spellcheck had a stroke. (You know—when the squiggly line is SO dark and red that you realize it’s coming from a rage from spellcheck’s childhood.)

I resisted spellcheck and had it published, only to hear from grammar Nazis, concerned friends, and those who joined the club (which probably is called, “Cream Should Be Spelled C-R-E-A-M.”) They all asked me to reform. I became defensive, which made them believe that I was not only ignorant, but mentally challenged.

So I have learned in a world that talks a good game of creativity while desperately extoling the status quo, to let the cream rise to the top and let the crème sink to the bottom.

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Crème

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crème: (n) cream

Sometimes I foolishly allow myself to get on a jag of discovering correct grammar, proper sentence structure, and believe it or not, accurate spelling.

In the midst of this pursuit, I occasionally stumble on a word that has an old-time spelling and a new-fangled spelling without any particular consensus on which one is definitively correct.

Idiot that I occasionally am, I adopt the unusual spelling or pronunciation, thinking it makes me a trifle uptown or high-falutin’.

The result is always the same.

All the people who do not share my predilection for a historical study of the English language—etymology—immediately wonder why in the hell I use the word etymology when I wasn’t mentioning insects.

I know they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I am positive I have discovered some nugget of personal treasure which I am offering in order to seem expansive.

But inevitably, I’ll be corrected—rudely.

In one of my novels I wrote that my character requested “coffee and crème.”

First, my spellcheck had a stroke. (You know—when the squiggly line is SO dark and red that you realize it’s coming from a rage from spellcheck’s childhood.)

I resisted spellcheck and had it published, only to hear from grammar Nazis, concerned friends, and those who joined the club (which probably is called, “Cream Should Be Spelled C-R-E-A-M.”) They all asked me to reform. I became defensive, which made them believe that I was not only ignorant, but mentally challenged.

 

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Cremate

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Cremate: (v) to reduce a dead body to ashes by fire

I grew up with a “Kellogg’s” approach to death and burial.

This was more or less taking your loved one, sticking him or her in a box, sealing the lid and tucking the flake away.

All the funerals I went to had gorgeous cereal boxes. They all ended up at a gravesite where the container was lowered into the ground, covered over and marked with a stone that insisted in granite that this individual once lived.

So when my thirteen-year-old son passed away from complications due to a hit-and-run accident, I was far from any home we had, traveling on the road. I immediately discovered that those boxes ain’t cheap.

Not only are they expensive, but they demand that you buy a plot of land—which is also extremely costly—and place your loved one in an area where you must to drive to visit.

Well, I realized I was not going to live in the community where my boy died, so I was offered the option of cremation. It was considerably less money. Also, at the end of the process, they handed over a box containing a sealed, plastic bag of dusty and ashy remains.

It was rather shocking. Opening the lid, I took a peek at the contents. It reminded me of when I was a kid and was given the job in late October of cleaning the fireplace out so we would be able to make a nice, cozy flame on cold, winter nights.

… Ashen, clingy powder that wanted to stick to your skin—or if you got it too close to your face and inhaled, could make you cough.

This was not my son. This didn’t represent his brief journey.

I thought to myself, maybe it’s a good thing. Instead of painting up something that’s dead and gone, burn it up, confirming that it will no longer be here.

I picked up the carton, put it in the back of our van, and we traveled with it for years—stuck in the corner near the wheel well.

At times I considered scattering the ashes, but there was no particular place that had more significance than another. Absent finding a resting ground for his soot, I felt more inclined to just keep him nearby.

Matter of fact, he’s still with us.

My younger son has taken him and lifted him up in honor … in a corner of the attic.

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Cremains

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Cremains: (n) the ashes of a cremated corpse

She stared down at the container, fighting back tears, and turned quietly and sincerely to the undertaker, motioning with her eyes toward the vessel.

He, trying to anticipate her question, jumped in and said, “Yes. This is your beloved husband.”

Suddenly, surprisingly, while still holding the urn tightly in her hands, she did a little two-step jig with her feet, laughed, and turned to the austere mortician and said, “So, this is all that cremains?”

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