Tag Archives: gooey

Crisp

Crisp: (adj) primarily food which is firm and fresh; not soft or wilted:

Bends but does not snap.

If you bought some celery from the store and a stalk bends but does not snap in the center, it is officially not crisp.

Yet in everyday life, normally that which is bendable, flexible, pliant is considered more usable than anything that would snap in the middle when challenged.

What do we really want to be crisp?

Oh, sometimes we throw it in as a descriptive word. It doesn’t really mean anything.

“That was a really crisp dance routine.”

“The delivery of his speech was articulate and crisp.”

We probably should have abandoned the word long ago.

Although we extol the beauty of something being crisp, we don’t necessarily like crisp things.

I’ve heard people say, “There’s nothing like a large, crisp apple.” But I’ve also walked into a party and seen apples laying on tables with one bite out of them—because they were too crisp.

Then there are foolers.

Somebody offers you an “apple crisp.”

But it isn’t crisp. It’s deliciously moist and gooey.

We don’t even want our cereal to be crisp. Some people insist they want it crunchy but that gets annoying after a while. Can we be candid? One of the better parts of a bowl of cereal is lifting it up to your lips and slurping down the last little bit of milk—accompanied by some soggy pieces of corn flake or Captain Crunch.

I would not want to be an agent assigned to promote “crisp.” Candidly, I think it comes off a little self-righteous. You might even be frightened to be around “crisp” because its standards are so high that you would fear you would never be able to measure up.

After all, celery that isn’t crisp can still be chopped up and thrown into a stew or Thanksgiving dressing. You may not want to smear it with peanut butter—but how often does that really come up? Only when you’ve run out of chips, dips and buffalo wings and you gratefully discover a jar of peanut butter and some normally ignored crisp celery.

 

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

 

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Aloe Vera

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Aloe Vera: (n) a gelatinous substance obtained from a kind of aloe, used especially in cosmetics as an emollient and for the treatment of burns.

My mother was obsessive.

I do not say that in a judgmental tone. Perhaps a certain amount of obsession is necessary to maintain maternal energy. I’m not sure.

But what she would often do was obsess over some idea, totally selling out her soul in that direction–until a new revelation made its way onto the horizon, which she embraced with equal fervor, although the past experience did not necessarily warrant such enthusiasm.

She went through an aloe phase.

She encountered someone who had an aloe plant and became so enthralled with the idea–that it was used in ancient times as a healing agent, and even appeared in the Bible, which gave it credibility and supernatural implications–that she decided to grow her own aloe plant.

It would be difficult to describe how much she fussed over the sprout. I thought she was going to expel a kidney in her anticipation of it completing its cycle and birthing the pods which contained the magic ointment.

Then–a problem. For you see, the aloe plant produces an ointment which is very helpful for treating burns or cuts. At least, that’s the promo. So once her plant had grown, she found herself in the uncomfortable position of hoping, at least secretly, that I would burn or cut myself, so she could try out her plant.

I’m sure she felt horrible to wish for such a difficulty to befall me. It may be my imagination, but I thought she left matches lying around more, and I can’t swear to it, but there seemed to be a few shards of glass near my toys.

But being a young boy, it wasn’t too long before I warranted treatment. Trying to mask her thrill over becoming an ancient physician of remedy, she expressed concern over my boo boo, and then broke off one of the pods from the plant and squeezed the gooey stuff onto my cut. Then, almost hourly, she checked the progress.

I cannot truthfully tell you that my finger healed any more quickly with the aloe vera than it did with some alcohol and a band-aid. But she was convinced.

Matter of fact, she brought me into the room in front of strangers, held out my wound for inspection and explained her mode of treatment. But like so many other things my mother pursued–and also due to the fact that it became difficult to plan enough injuries to maintain the enthusiasm about the aloe–she eventually dropped her care of the plant, and the poor little thing dried up and died.

We didn’t speak much about it after that. Matter of fact, she never used aloe vera again on any of my cuts. We were back to hydrogen peroxide and alcohol.

But I will never forget the first time my exuberant mother squeezed gooey-gooey from a plant onto my finger.

It brought her joy.  So I offered an obligatory smile.