Tag Archives: dictionary

Arachnophobia

dictionary with letter A

Arachnophobia: (n) an irrational fear of spiders.

A fear of spiders.

Isn’t that like saying, “people who poop?”

I mean, it’s everybody, right?

You might have two creepy people you’ve met in your life who think spiders are cool, but you would never let them babysit your children, nor would you co-sign a loan so they could buy a really neat video game setup.

I guess the key word here is “irrational.” An irrational fear. When it comes to spiders, what would that be?

Honestly, I do not see parents turning to their children and saying, “Come on, Billy, it’s just a spider. Here’s a little comb. Preen his hairy legs.”

People have all sorts of pets, but no one has a pet spider. Matter of fact, I think having a pet spider might be one of the four profiles of a serial killer.

So what is an irrational fear of spiders?

I suppose if you mistook a box of raisins for spiders that might qualify.

Or if you believed the dried boogers in your nose were spiders and constantly tried to dig them out with Q-tips, I get that.

But other than that, a distaste for spiders is not really a fear, but rather, an intelligent pursuit.

I remember when I was told that you could tell a black widow spider by the hour-glass on its…well, I don’t remember. Was it its backside? Or its underside? Either way, if I have to get that close to be sure, just to have fellowship with a black spider without being prejudiced against it for being a black widow, I will pass.

Then there’s the brown recluse spider, which is brown, and I assume, reclusive. So I imagine if you happen upon one of them, they’d be really pissed off because you found their hiding place and they would spread some poison your way.

I don’t even want to get into tarantulas.

And Grandaddy Longlegs look like they should be in Star Wars.

I don’t like spiders.

If I reach the pearly gates and God finds my bigotry against them to be distasteful and feels I need to spend some time in purgatory for my intolerance, so be it.

Just as long as there are no spiders.

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Arab

dictionary with letter A

Arab: (adj) of or relating to Arabia or the people of Arabia

I grew up in Ohio.

My formative years were spent in a small village in the Buckeye Nation, surrounded by bigoted people.

They did not like black people–not because of proximity or personal contact. It was simply a tradition that had been passed down from one generation to another, and even though some of their ancestors fought to free the slaves, they didn’t especially want these “freed men” to live in the same neighborhood.

I was surrounded by intolerance. My family would probably argue the point, but only because we love to rewrite history once it’s been corrected.

But truthfully, the average person living in Central Ohio in 1965 believed many erroneous things about “colored folk,” including that they smelled differently, they were less intelligent, and they certainly should not date sons, let alone daughters.

Here’s an interesting fact: that isn’t true today.

The reason it isn’t true is that gradually the minority of the people who were more loving and giving wore down the intolerant, or else they buried them in the cemetery or changed their minds.

But as long as we believed that there were more “good Buckeyes” who were color blind than “bad Buckeyes” who were not, no progress was made.

The same thing is true for the Arabs.

They are experiencing a very strong backlash to extreme fundamentalism in the religion that they hold dear.

Here’s a fact: until the good ones who love people outlast and eventually outnumber the ones who don’t, and take the words of their holy book and punctuate the verses that are more inclusive, they will be characterized, universally, as dangerous.

There’s no way around it. If my close neighbor who shares my mosque flies airplanes into buildings, I become a suspect.

In my community of 1,500 people, having 60 folks who were open to having black people living in the town was not sufficient to warrant referring to our citizens as open-minded.

Truth had to win out.

So here’s the conclusion, and I speak this joyfully and hopefully to my Arab brothers and sisters:

Wear down your bigots and outnumber them.

It’s the only way to regain the beauty of your cause and an acceptance of your true mission.

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Aquiline

dictionary with letter A

Aquiline: (adj) like an eagle, esp. referring to the nose. EX: “hooked like an eagle’s beak.”

It arrives at about age twelve, and hopefully, by the grace of God, disappears on one’s eighteenth birthday. Honestly, it will not disappear if we allow its friends to come and shack up.

“It” is insecurity.

When I was twelve years old, I was convinced of the following:

I believed my nose was aquiline because my dad was German and had a hooked nose. I failed to realize that my mother’s genes were also in there, so my hook was not as pronounced. (I once referred to my nose as a “hooker” until my Aunt Minnie explained that the term was inappropriate.)

I also believed that my lips were very large and that I possibly was the love child of my mother with a black man. (There was no basis for this since there were no black people within thirty miles of our community. But I chose to believe my mother had made some sort of journey.)

I also thought my eyes were crooked, and began to tilt my head to the left to compensate for the poor horizon of my peepers.

Keeping up this craziness was the notion that my B were “pinned to my head,” which I assumed was the sign of some sort of mental retardation.

Moving along, I totally was possessed with the frustration that I had horribly chubby cheeks, so I tried to elongate my face by holding my mouth in the shape of a small “O” all the time.

This insecurity is present in all adolescents, and is only dangerous if it’s allowed to link up with intensity, culminating in a bit of insanity, which in adulthood can lead to plastic surgery, therapy sessions and late-night heart-wrenching honesty with your mate, drenched in tears.

I know we think the answer to this question is to convince people that “we are all beautiful just the way we are.”

But since none of us really believe that deep in our hearts, wouldn’t it be more logical for us to come to the conclusion that we’re all ugly in our own way?

 

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Aqueduct

dictionary with letter A

Aqueduct: (n) an artificial channel containing water.

The Romans built them. They were very proud of it.

Matter of fact, it’s what the Romans did best. (Not build aqueducts–be prideful.)

They felt like they were bringing civilization to the world, and it really angered them when the world didn’t grovel in appreciation.

Matter of fact, when I was researching a novel and I began to study the life and times of Pontius Pilate, what I uncovered was a frustrated Epicurean aristocrat who was always aggravated about the Jewish peasants around him and how they failed to appreciate the sophistication that the Empire’s culture proffered.

He was particularly perturbed with their indifference toward the aqueducts he built in Jerusalem, circa 25 A.D. Of course, back then nobody knew it was A.D. because a young preacher from Nazareth had not yet circulated among the masses, changing the historical timetable.

What this Nazarene stumbled into was an ongoing tiff between the zealous Zionists and pompous Pontius. He continued to be the self-reliant governor of Judea, appointed by Caesar, and they, the self-righteous children of Israel, allegedly ordained by God.

Something had to give.

There was an ugly chasm between them. And as Pilate promoted the glory of his aqueducts, many of the Jews refused to use the water because it was provided by the “dog gentiles.”

In walks Jesus.

He had the misfortune of teaching love for mankind in the midst of a quarrel over water distribution. so when the Jews decided to arrest him and bring him in front of Pontius Pilate, the tension in the air was already thick due to the misunderstanding about aqueducts.

Yes, it is very possible that Jesus was crucified … because Pontius Pilate had grown weary of water issues.

 

 

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Aquarius

dictionary with letter A

Aquarius (n): the eleventh sign of the Zodiac.

“This is the dawning of the …”

The next part of this lyric from the song in Hair is “…Age of Aquarius.”

I happen to really enjoy that production and the tune, even though I grew up in a religious environment which believed that all astrology was “of the devil.”

Yes. Leave it to Satan to come up with a practice where everything is left to chance and the moving of the stars.

So as a kid, it was difficult to sing the song, share the song or even refer to the song around grownups. They would warn me that I was welcoming in dark demons, which would later infest me with horrible attitudes like failing to pay my electric bill.

It was difficult–because truth is much like water. It tends to come from everywhere and surprise us with how similar it is, considering its divergent points of origin.

Some water comes from the mountains through melted snow.

Some from the sky.

Some from wells from deep within the earth.

But pour it in a cup, drink it down and it’s refreshing.

I have to be honest with you–the off-Broadway musical, Hair, did more to enlighten me, generate social consciousness and make me compassionate than any sermon I ever heard in church.

It was raw, a little silly and laced with too much hopefulness.

But without that kind of childlike faith, we all become cynical growling adults. And deep in my heart, I wish there was an Age of Aquarius. I dream of how wonderful it would be if the stars would shift, Jupiter would align with Mars and attitudes would improve.

But I think I’m stuck with the symbolism–or maybe I’m Jupiter and my brother is Mars and the truth of life is still stuck in the closet somewhere … of the seventh house.

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Aquarium

dictionary with letter A

Aquarium (n): a transparent container of water in which fish and other water creatures and plants are kept.

Sometimes I look back at the hiccups in my life and giggle over my choices, predilections and the fads that permeated my consciousness temporarily, only to fall to the wayside as a new idea punctured my awareness.

About fifteen years ago I decided I wanted an aquarium. I think I saw one in a movie, thought it was cool and believed it would be a conversation piece for individuals who came into my home and seemed incapable of speech.

I did what I usually did–researched the subject just enough to make me totally unqualified.

Unqualified, but verbose.

So I bought the tank, filled it with water, got the pellets, put in the little furniture, rocks and stuff to go along with it, and bought myself some fish.

Let me tell you–I selected my fish based upon what looked pretty and interesting. The proprietor of the pet shop, in great generosity, donated five gold fish, which looked rather bland and unappealing.

I threw all the fish together with no concern for cultural integrity.

In two or three days I noticed that my gold-fish were gone. I looked for them in the bottom of the tank, planning to retrieve them for a decent burial, but no luck. I looked along the sides, but not there either.

So I called my pet shop owner and he explained to me that those pretty fish I bought were…well, shall we say, cannibals.

They ate the gold-fish.

I asked him why he didn’t tell me that in the store and he gave that lame response often provided by shopkeepers.

“I thought you knew.”

So you see, much like my gold-fish, my interest in aquariums was short-lived. But it gave me pause for thought.

In the aquarium kingdom–and I assume paralleling into the human–the pretty and interesting fish always eat the dull and boring ones.

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Aquamarine

dictionary with letter A

Aquamarine (n): a light bluish-green color.

This may sound very selfish, but one of the fringe benefits of the recent civil rights afforded to the gay community (aside from the fact that we live in a free country and it was basically inevitable once the belly-aching ceased) is that we no longer have to be threatened by other men saying “that’s gay.”

It has become a taboo.

It used to be a perpetual, common horror.

I remember many years ago when leisure suits were both leisurely and in fashion, I found one at a discount store, marked down, which happened to be my size. It was aquamarine.

You see, the problem was that even though it was a much more colorful era, certain hues were still looked upon as being suspect of your sexual orientation. Add to the fact that I was a piano player, and you had the makings of a San Francisco gay parade.

Not only did I get an occasional sneer and sidewise comment, like, “Nice color, big boy,” but I also began to envision that I was being stared at by the entire world, viewed as a “man lover.”

So paranoid was I that I started prancing around like John Wayne and using the deepest timbre my voice could muster. When wearing the aquamarine garment, I was always quick to point out that I was married and had fathered children from my own manly source.

It was crazy.

Finally, even though I loved the outfit, I purposefully “accidentally” forgot it at a motel. (What I mean is, I actually did forget it, but remembered it by the time I got to the elevator and decided not to go back for it.)

So somewhere in Yuma, Arizona, there is a big fat man wearing an aquamarine leisure suit … who obviously has much more confidence than I do.

 

 

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Aqualung

dictionary with letter A

Aqualung (n): a portable breathing apparatus for divers.

There are some movies I just can’t watch.

I shall not bore you in this brief article by listing them, nor elaborating on each and every style that curries my disfavor. Let me just say that any movie where people are swimming under water, holding their breath, scares the…well, scares the salt water out of me.

Especially when people around me start trying to imitate, holding their breath also, to prove they would be able to survive the ordeal being dramatically acted out in front of us.

Let me be honest. Normally I find myself to be a generous, giving sort of soul. If you’re a dollar short, I will come along. If you need a lift to work, count on me.

But if we happen to be under water, sucking on breathing tubes and suddenly my tank goes dry, I’ll rip that mother right out of your mouth.

That’s right. It wouldn’t matter if you were my mother.

Some sort of terror of suffocating would cause me to abandon all social restraint, and Christian training, for that matter.

Upon resurfacing, breathing and seeing your body floating in the water, I would be ashamed. I might even second-guess my instinct to survive.

But I can’t even bear to watch people trying to use those tanks in a movie, or discovering that they are low on O2, and begin passing it between them like there’s a choice for the other person to survive.

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this and I certainly hope I never find myself in this position. Because no one wants to play the coward in the movie, who swims away from the little girl who’s in peril.

But I guarantee you, if I were placed in such a dilemma, I would swim away … like a little girl in peril. 

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Aptitude

dictionary with letter A

Aptitude (n): 1. an ability to do something 2. suitability or fitness

For a myriad of reasons, I barely made it through the 1980s with my being intact, primarily because of my complete disdain and obvious aversion to personality tests and aptitude quizzes.

It was all the rage in that era and still persists today in pockets promoting superficial psycho-babble.

The notion of taking responsibility for one’s life or learning a craft seems so arduous to the average person that they would like to believe they were born with certain abilities, rarities and anointings so as to take all of the mystery and work out of their personal journey.

Parents, aunts, uncles and grandma and grandpa all encourage this by noting everything from the timber of our early babble, to the length, height or breadth of body parts, to place a mission upon us before we’ve even learned how to stop messing our pants.

Certainly everyone wants us to fall into a personality type, where we can hide behind the pluses and minuses of that particular idea to explain our behavior.

But even though these testers will insist that you can be docile, quiet, introverted and silent, they sometimes fail to remind you that it is the world around us that requires we step out of our shadow and into the light.

Yes, perhaps intimidated folks can be given a name, but it is the gregarious ones who will be given the position. One would think it’s a plot, to keep part of the population oppressed in order to supply fodder for the more menial tasks, if one was of a nind to believe in conspiracy theories.

What I think is that we are too grounded in a Calvinistic, pre-destined American thinking that wants the whole plan laid out in front of us by the time we’re three years old, to ever instruct the general populace in matters of manners, intensity, perseverance and expansion.

I can tell you of a certainty that I had no aptitude for anything but eating. Yet there isn’t a doctor alive who will let me believe “I was born” with the aptitude to be fat. Isn’t that interesting?

Apparently some characteristics are inserted at birth and others become bad habits.

So what I choose to believe is that I have nothing but an aptitude for laziness and if I pursue that, I will end up poor and alone. Therefore I choose to overcome my aptitude … and study the present pursuit that rings my bell.

 

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Apt

dictionary with letter A

Apt (adj): 1. appropriate under the circumstances 2. a tendency to do something.

At the risk of coming off like a Gloomy Gus or Grumpy Grady, I will tell you that I yearn for a simpler time when people’s functions, goals and even occupations led you to believe that certain attributes or virtues just might be included.

Yes, I think that a grocer should be apt to courtesy and warmth, and gregarious. I really don’t want him or her thinking about their stock portfolio, but instead, greatly concerned about the freshness of my tomatoes.

I think a politician should be apt to be nearly boring, insisting on discussing the issues pertinent to the constituency, instead of overly zealous about hand-pumping, baby-kissing and making deals with lobbyists.

It would be wonderful if ministers were pre-disposed to practice what they preach instead of merely preaching what they practice, hoping that somewhere along the line “it’ll all work out.”

I think musicians should be thrilled that someone wants to pay them a dollar to do what they love instead of finding ways to act like the craft of making music is deadly and painful.

I am apt to be a writer from time to time–and I certainly do not want to bore you with my process, nor lead you to believe that my writer’s block lands on me, crushing my bones.

Finding peace with oneself is a two-fold process:

  1. Discover something you like to do.
  2. Keep liking it.

If we actually did this in our country … we just might be apt to succeed. 

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