Tag Archives: breathless

Decimate

Decimate: (v) to destroy a great number

The horror of eight million dead Jewish folk.

The prospect of millions being killed in a pandemic outbreak.

These are large events that leave us breathless with their destruction and evil.

But there are other ways to decimate.

Perhaps most common is that moment when most assuredly tenderness, kindness, empathy, reflection and mercy are required. But instead of supplying just the right portion of beauty, an extra thought, another consideration or a bit of nervousness forbids the outpouring.

I will not go so far as to say that losing small moments of grace and gentleness eventually cause horror and mayhem, but I do believe that this journey—this life—this expanse of time we’ve been granted—is meant to hone all of our senses to any possibility where sweetness can be added to the sour and deep-rooted, heartfelt appreciation might be inserted with a wish.

Let us not decimate that which brings life.

And life is abundant when joy is full.

Crayon

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Crayon: (n) pointed stick or pencil of colored clay, chalk, wax, etc., used for drawing or coloring.

Elaborate was my plan.

Yes, many details, pieced together, far beyond my five years of life.

I loved crayons. But my mother never bought me a box that had more than twelve—and then, she never purchased the actual Crayola unit, which was so recognizable to my friends. So sometimes I showed up to play with our coloring books with my white box of eight crayons and they asked me, “Don’t you have crayons?”

It was mean. They could see that I had crayons—they just knew mine were “fake” and I was one of those kids who couldn’t afford “real” Crayolas.

I can remember like it was yesterday the first time I saw the gigantic container holding sixty-four crayons.

It was huge.

You couldn’t even use all the crayons—each hue pleaded for attention.

Fortunately for me, my friend allowed me to borrow from his pack of sixty-four, leaving me nearly teary-eyed and completely breathless. I never wanted to leave his home. After all, this was a house that contained the ultimate box of crayons, with sixty-four different opportunities.

Yet what started out as a pleasurable journey into the world of color ended up with me envious and angry.

So when my friend wasn’t looking, I reached in and took out six of my favorite colors from the pack and stuck them in the front pocket of my pants. To make sure he wouldn’t miss the crayons and there wouldn’t be a gap in the order as they stood like little soldiers in a row, I inserted some Kleenex into the slot and squished the crayons together, hoping to disguise the absence of the stolen six.

It worked.

He packed up the crayon box, put it away, and an hour later my mother came and picked me up.

Now, it was the next morning that my friend’s mother called my mother and asked if I knew anything about “missing crayons.”

I did but I wasn’t going to tell them.

The subject was dropped. They decided to take me at my word.

It would have been the perfect crime had it not been for the fact that I forgot to remove the crayons from the pocket of my pants, and my mother washed them in the machine—only to come out of the laundry room screaming over the messy, sloppy and smeary result.

I not only lost my crayons—I not only was unable to use what I had stolen—but the evidence of my guilt was now clearly melted all over my trousers.

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Comedian

Comedian: (n) an entertainer whose act is designed to make an audience laugh

If you tell a couple of jokes at several parties in a row, you’ll start hearing your friends proclaim, “You could be a comedian!”

And when you bashfully turn your head, they insist, “No, no! You could do stand-up.”

There comes a time in everyone’s life when we prove our worth by knowing how little we are.

I’ve been funny all my life. I know how to make people laugh. That does not make me a comedian.

That makes me lucky.

That makes me interesting.

Sometimes it even makes me valuable.

But to sustain a routine which continually makes people laugh is truly a masterful gift.

Even though I, myself, would not want to try stand-up comedy, I have taken the time to study it quite thoroughly. It has three major ingredients:

  1. You have to be willing to insult people because you’ve already insulted yourself.
  2. You need to be overcoming something and not afraid to talk about it in vivid or even gross detail.
  3. You need to insert just enough pathos and emotion that the audience is breathless to hear more.

Now, if you think a mere amateur can pull off these things, you should go out and sign up for open mic night–at your local pizza place.

 

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Arpeggio

dictionary with letter A

Arpeggio: (n) the notes of a chord played in succession, either ascending or descending.

I didn’t want to be a girl.

I was nine years old–all boy–and was nervous that somehow or another, certain activities, if pursued feverishly, might cause me to switch genders.

I had taken piano lessons for three years without giving it a second thought. But at age nine, other young men of my acquaintance noticed that I was tinkling the keys and explained to me in horrid, vivid detail, how I was in danger of transforming into a chick.

I don’t know how they were privy to this valuable information, but they were quite confident it was true. Such good friends they were that they decided to try to shake me out of my piano-playing hysteria by mocking me, making fun of me after my lesson and even drawing pictures of girls on my Thompson music book.

So somewhere caught between Chopin and Liszt, I stopped playing.

It was less than five years later when I realized that playing the piano could be a tremendous aid in attracting women instead of becoming one. Unfortunately, because I stopped playing piano at the juncture when certain exercises were being perfected, I never learned how to play an efficient descending arpeggio.

I know this may mean very little to you and is certainly not a great way to try to gain your empathy, but I discovered I had the ability to play an arpeggio going up, with its many beautiful notes, but to reverse the process, telling my fingers to go the other direction as quickly as possible–well, it left me digitally challenged.

I subsisted for many years hiding my weakness from the general public by avoiding the need for such a maneuver. Then one day, a song I had written had a passage which suddenly demanded a descending arpeggio. (I realize this tale must be leaving you breathless, so I won’t tarry over the details.)

I sat on my stool, a fully grown man, practicing what I surely would have learned much more easily at the age of nine. At the end of the session, I played my first successful descending arpeggio.

I did not cry. That would have been too girly. (The misconception continues.)

But every time I get the chance to play this particular exercise, a big smile bursts forth inside my being because I realize I conquered a fear which was not of my own conceiving … but still swallowed by my ego.

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