Tag Archives: bruises

Davenport

Davenport: (n) a large sofa, often one convertible into a bed.

Language is made out of razor blades.

It took me a while to learn this.

If you’re not careful, you’re going to cut people.

And if not agile, you may end up slicing yourself.

Whenever you contend that a certain word is necessary in order to communicate sophistication or perhaps being a well-rounded human, you’ve grabbed the razor blade and slashed out at the world around you.

Over the past fifteen years, I have made a concerted effort to make my language out of marshmallows. Even if they occasionally bounce off someone, it produces a giggle-fest instead of a bruise.

To do this, I had to get rid of the assertion that I became a “better person” by using “better talk.”

Example:

The best way to describe a large seating place in a living room is to call it a couch.

Once you abandon the word “couch,” everything else you say is an attempt to separate yourself from the milling masses and the ignorant idiots.

Even calling it a “sofa” is filled with such pretension that people immediately know you’re trying to communicate your verbal—or even perhaps natural—superiority.

I won’t even discuss the word “divan,” because truthfully, friends, it is not divine.

Yet when I was growing up, there were those who referred to a couch as a davenport. Generally speaking, they were old, white, and held their noses a little higher than others. It was obvious they were in a constant search for obscure terms to describe common things.

Many of them said tomato and potato with a soft sound on the “a.”

“To-mah-to.”

“Po-tah-to.”

Occasionally, when using a word from foreign extract, they actually fell into an accent which they mustered for the moment.

The pastor’s wife from my church had a davenport. That’s what she called it. Now, she never corrected anybody for calling it a sofa or a couch, but she refused to join them in such lollygagging of the tongue.

So let me tell you:

If you want to find out what your profile is on Earth, see how many attempts you make to establish patterns of speech that you have decided are more “high-minded” than others.

If you have many, many of them, you are officially an Earthly asshole.

If you have a few, you’re pretentious.

The recommended number of fussy words that you dare keep around in your lingo is zero. 

Damage

Damage: (n) injury or harm that reduces value or usefulness

Hello, stranger.

Pardon me, I don’t know your name.

I’m not really trying to introduce myself. More or less, I just want you to understand my position.

I’m not sure if I would be gregarious even if the option were available to me. Since you are unfamiliar to my world, I feel compelled to go slowly—perhaps stop.

It’s nothing personal.

I see you’re a little put off and perhaps don’t understand my misgivings, but that’s because you haven’t lived in my world or my time, surrounded by a topsy-turvy environment, nurturing terror.

There are blessings.

But as people, both religious and secular, will concur, the trials and difficulties greatly outweigh the payoffs.

It may seem like a negative way of looking at one’s lifespan, but still, all in all, it is safer to embrace caution and to ignore any temptation to take a risk by pursuing new relationships, new friends, ethnicities or environments.

Understand?

Haven’t you been hurt?

Healed of the wound, the scar and internal blistering is still sensitive.

Is it not nature’s way—to give us a constant reminder of our foolishness, our sins and our naivete by leaving behind bruises and discoloration?

Perhaps you’re a fine person.

Let me rephrase that. I don’t know you’re a fine person. That’s why I must treat you as if you’re not. I simply can’t afford to take on any new conflicts.

I have damage.

It has been addressed, discussed and I suppose might seem covered by the grace of the Divine. But still, it quietly lies within me, warning me of the many troubles of those who wander too far from reclusion.

Perhaps there will be a day when you will be better known to me or my damage will once and for all be contained.

Perhaps not.

Here is what I see:

After meeting thousands of people, we eliminate all the comers to two or three we claim to hold dear, but still maintain our intimacy at arm’s length.

Bump

j-r-practix-with-border-2

Bump: (n) a light blow or a jolting collision.

Adolescence.

It’s when the urge arrives long before the instinct. Bluntly, the passion to do something far outweighs the available knowledge on what might happen.

When I was in high school, we had a musical group which had two goals:

  1. To sing and impress people.
  2. To get girls because we were singing and impressing people.

So one night after we had done some sort of gig, we were driving in the van that one of our members had purchased–a big, black number that looked really sinister and cool. Each one of us had a girl with him.

Let’s put together the ingredients again:

  • Teenage boys.
  • New van.
  • Just got done singing.
  • Girls in the vehicle.

Of course we had to try something crazy.

So we attempted to find out how fast the van would go. In the process of doing that, we came to a crest in the road, not realizing there was a huge drop-off at the top. There had once been a sign warning of a “bump,” but it had been knocked down many years ago and lay in the ditch, rusting. So as we climbed the hill and got to the top, the road disappeared underneath the tires and we found ourselves airborne.

I’m sure it was not a long jump, but for a short time, our van did its best impression of Air Force One.

We landed with a huge thud, throwing everybody in the air bouncing heads on the ceiling, as the van tilted form side to side, threatening to tip over.

The driver intelligently pulled to the side of the road to make sure that nobody had been killed. Confident that our bumps were well on their way to becoming bruises, we proceeded down the road giggling a little less, partying sparingly.

So the lesson of this story is simple: beware of vans who meet bumps in the night.

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Black and White

Black and white: (adj) clearly defined opposing principles or issues.

Dictionary B

You can always stimulate a debate by posing the question of whether there actually are things that are black and white–in other words, ideas which are either solely good or massively evil.

The general consensus of our present society is that such defined positions do not really exist, but rather, mingle into shades of gray.

But I contend there is one–yes, one–white, pure notion: Treat other people the way you want to be treated.

Sometimes we think we can compromise that particular pearl of great price.

  • Matter of fact, a politician will say that if an opponent hits him, he must hit back.
  • A school counselor suggests that the only way to defeat a bully is to figuratively hit him or her in the nose.

We have decided it is unnatural to turn the other cheek for fear of sporting double bruises.

So we’ve created a dreary gray. The Golden Rule has no chance to shine.

So are there black and white issues?

I think there is only one white issue: no one is better than anyone else.

And when you deny that, you darken the skies of mankind’s future.

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