Amsterdam: (n): the capital and largest city of the Netherlands.

There are two things that tickle me about myself:

• My sporadic moments of inspirational genius
• And the remainder of my life, where I nearly drown in a pool of my own stupidity

So when I looked at the dictionary and saw that my word for the day was “Amsterdam”, I reached into the recesses of my experience to find what I knew about this city in Holland.

First of all, I am not certain whether you should refer to it as the Netherlands or Holland. If I were a native, I would certainly prefer Holland, instead of being called “the land of nothing.”

I guess what tickled me the most was that I have this strange collage of data-bits in my brain, ranging from Hans Christian Anderson, a little boy with his finger in the dyke, wooden shoes, tulips, rampant marijuana smoking and legal prostitution.

Trying to figure out how I would unite all of these ideas into a common theme for my essay this morning just produced a giggle-fest somewhere down deep in my soul.

I suppose I could be cute and say that Hans Christian Anderson was on his way to take a tulip to his favorite prostitute, sporting freshly-carved wooden shoes, when he came upon the boy who was in charge of protecting the dyke, who instead had become quite stoned, toking his bong, causing water to begin to flood into the community, so Hans, with great regret in his heart, stuck his tulip into the hole, realizing that he had lost his rendezvous with a lover, but saved a people.

Honestly, ladies and gentlemen … that’s the best I can do.

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