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Afraid

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

 

Afraid: (adj.) feeling fear or anxiety; frightened.

 It was my favorite shirt.

I was nineteen years old and it was during the era of the counter-culture—hippies, rock and roll … well, you know the groove.

It was gray and had embroidered white velvet flowers on it.

I loved it.

It was almost too small for me, so depending on whether I was in one of my puffy weeks or thinning days, I could sit down wearing it with spreading buttons or with more comfort.

I didn’t care. I worshipped it.

I wore it at least five times a week. My criterion for deciding whether to don it in the morning was sniffing under the armpits to ascertain the intensity of its lethal nature.

One day I noticed that some of the threads on the bottom of the shirt had come loose. I didn’t think much about it. I just pulled on them and tore them off. After about two weeks of doing this, I realized that my shirt was no longer shedding threads, but had actually torn and was practically ruined.

At that juncture, somebody pointed out that if I had sewn up the bottom of the shirt instead of pulling on the threads, the problem would have been solved and I would still have my garment. (I continued to wear it in its dilapidated condition until one day I was walking down the street and a guy handed me two dollars, thinking I was homeless…)

The reason I share this story is that being afraid is a lot like being a-frayed.

Our threads come loose and we yank on them, pull at them, deny our feelings and pretend everything is all right until we have no opportunities left and we stand, clothed in unrighteousness.

Yes, afraid is when we refuse to sow up our fears and tie up our worries and instead, allow them to destroy everything we like. And even when we use noble words like “responsibility,” “concern,” “involvement,” “anxious,” or in some cases, even “wondering”—we’re just masking the monster.

I lost the shirt off my back because it was “a-frayed.”

If I become too afraid—well … I can lose my own soul.

 

Aerosol

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter AAerosol: (n) a substance enclosed under pressure and able to be released as a fine spray, typically by means of a propellant gas.

It was called Right Guard. It was a man’s deodorant.

So many of my buddies who played football with me sprayed the stuff in the locker room that I felt I could just walk through, flap my arms and meet my deodorant need–because even though you aimed it directly at your pit area, it sprayed in a three-foot circumference, creating a great “cloud of witness” and confirmation of your sweet odor.

Another nice thing is that because it was in a spray can–aerosol–you could aim it at nooks and crannies on your body which shall remain nameless for the sake of propriety.

At the tail end of my showering experience with members of my own gender, it was suddenly discovered that these aerosol cans were polluting the environment, and were perhaps even dangerous for us to inhale repeatedly, threatening lethal conclusions.

So another great pleasure of Americana was ripped away by researchers who think a white coat is stylish.

We started using roll-ons. Speed stick.

It may have been at that point that some of the backbone that is supposed to be fused into the male of our species was removed–because once you start putting on girly deodorant instead of walking around in a purple haze of Right Guard, you begin to deteriorate in your confidence to be a stud.

Of course, this is just a theory.

  • Maybe Richard Nixon wouldn’t have wimped out and lied about Watergate if he was still spraying his underarms.
  • Or maybe our football team would have actually had a winning season if we weren’t putting creamy stuff in our pit hair.
  • Maybe men would be able to communicate better with women if they felt that all their hidden parts  were being “Right Guard-ed.”
  • Maybe women wouldn’t be so dissatisfied with their lives with men if the bathroom had TWO deodorants instead of the couple sharing an “ice-blue Secret.”

I know it’s ridiculous–but it’s also absolutely frivolous and stupid to think that everything on earth does not have SOME mission to kill us, if misused.

For instance, give me a bathroom spray that explodes with a gas of beautiful odor instead of trickling out after I get done using the pot. I want the whole room to smell like flowers, so no one will exactly know what I did in there.

(I also like Right Guard because it’s the position I played on the team.)

Abloom

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abloom: adj. covered in flowers.

I like flowers.

What I don’t like is pretending that I’m uninterested in flowers because if I stated in public that I was, I might be perceived as gay.

With all the necessary and valuable discussion going on about human relationships and civil rights–including equality for the gay community–it has heightened people’s defensive nature concerning what is gay and what is not.

So if you’re a guy, you can be nervous about going to a movie with another guy, feeling the need to worry about whether the appearance of two dudes together sends the signal that you’re sharing more than a bucket of popcorn. If you happen to be the kind of person who just enjoys good movies and doesn’t believe there’s any such thing as a “chick flick” or “macho films,” you can be seen as a borderline case–ready to jump into the rainbow coalition.

If you know your way around a kitchen and like to cook, you have to make sure that you have a beard, spiked hair and talk gruffly about things like motorcycles and football–or people might wonder if your delicacy is Twinkies.

It’s horrible.

I would love to walk outside and see a field abloom and be able to discuss the colorations and sheer utter magnitude of the vision without wondering if people thought I also had a poster of Judy Garland hanging in my boudoir. Is it going to be possible to actually become more open-minded, when we attribute certain levels of appreciation to a sexual preference instead of just plain human enjoyment?

  • Do I like Broadway musicals? Some of them.
  • Do I know how to decorate a room? Yes–even though I welcome other people’s opinions.
  • Can I say that the “fields are abloom” without people thinking that I am queenly? I fear not.

I will know we have grown as human beings when we talk more about human beings than we do about men, women, gay and straight. To me the whole thing is similar to our fourth grade obsession with cooties. Guys really liked girls but weren’t sure whether we were supposed to or not–and because of the eyeballing of our friends, we pretended that touching one of these females would cause multi-legged insects to infest our bodies. Let me be the first to say it: cuties don’t give you cooties.

And reporting that a field is abloom does not make you Anderson Cooper.

 

Abelard

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abelard: Peter (1079 – 1142) French scholar, theologian and philosopher. He is famous for his tragic love affair with his student, Heloise.

“Tragic love affair.”

You know what’s tragic about it? Old Pete and Heloise let circumstance keep them apart and decided to pretend they were in love at a distance instead of chasing each other down and living together for the rest of their lives.

You see, that’s the problem with romance. At first, it’s just too romantic. It later becomes real. Then it often ends up disappointed. There’s nothing wrong with having a silly infatuation filled with love letters, flowers and candy. To say anything against that would be like storming the gates of heaven with a butter knife.

But you can add one thing to your romantic tizzy when you’re first getting started with a new possibility. The two of you can sit down in a moment of non-sexual blur and decide how to handle confrontation–because confrontation is essential in a relationship. This may shock you, but it ends up that we really don’t love our lovers “just the way they are.”

So rather than being five years down the road and waking up one morning realizing that for some unexplained reason you have fallen out of love with your former-hot-mama, it might just be a good idea to deal with the smaller problems when they come up–and have a way to talk them through instead of just tolerating them because you’re horny.

Yes, if Old Pete and Heloise had said to one another, “We’re in love, but we’ve got some problems here with people interfering and both of us are a little bit chicken to fight the critics, so maybe together we can come up with a backbone between us…”

Well, if they had done that, they might have ended up together instead of being listed in the  Dictionary as a “tragic love affair.”

It is true that love is a many splendid thing–but it becomes even better when you find your voice and you’re able to share, fairly candidly, your heart’s desire.