Tag Archives: greenery

Chickpea

Chickpea: (n) a round yellowish seed, used widely as food.

Imagine my shock when I discovered that garbanzo beans were also known as chickpeas.

For years, when I traveled with my friends, had brief attempts at weight loss and hovered over salad bars, I wondered if the garbanzo beans
were calorically low enough to be included in my pile of greenery and anemic salad dressing.

One day I asked the waitress at the local Ruby Tuesday’s in Alabama if they had garbanzo beans. She stared at me as if I were a Yankee who had come to ransack her plantation.

“What’s that?” she said in utter disgust.

So I described it, as much as one can manage wording to verbally recreate a non-descript object.

She replied, “You mean chickpeas?”

At this point, I was trying to be patient. I am fully aware that people from the Southern part of our great nation often have different names for things–usually with a country tinge to them.

“Chickpeas?” I questioned. “I’ve never heard them called that.”

As we were conversing, a lovely woman, gracious and well-spoken, came up and added, “Both names are correct.”

She had an English accent.

I was aggravated. I thought I had a young southern girl trapped in a language faux pas–and then this agent straight from the throne of the King’s English steps over to thwart my enthusiasm.

“See, I told ya’,” drawled the girl, strolling away.

I glanced over at the dignified Englishwoman and said, with great conviction, “I will always be a garbanzo man.”

 

Donate Button

Calamine

Calamine: (n) a soothing lotion or ointment consisting primarily of zinc oxide

It is not that teenagers believe themselves to be invincible, but rather, they have not traveled to see enough road kill to know when to avoid
 the vultures.

Such was my case at age fourteen.

I found myself in the wilderness of Oklahoma, which literally had no civilization other than a few locals, who believed that God had placed them on top of this mountain because they were “The Chosen People.”

The solitude and seclusion opened the door to the possibility of skinny dipping. I would never skinny dip anywhere other than an ice-cold stream in the Oklahoma wilderness, around a bunch of friends who were equally as intimidated by the whole experience and so desperately tried not to look at one another’s peckers.

The bank descending to the creek was very steep, so unless you planned on leaping into the water (which as my friend, Bill, found out, was like breaking ice) you had to ease your way down–or as I found out, just slide.

There was vegetation everywhere, so I used that greenery as a moistening agent for my backside, to make the slip to the water more pleasant.

Now, moving ahead: it was two days later, on the drive back from Oklahoma, that I noticed that my rear end was extremely hot and itchy. When I arrived home, after rubbing my butt on the back seat the entire trip, I discovered that from the middle of my back to my ankles, I was covered with poison something.

The doctor couldn’t identify it. He said it was a little like poison oak, sumac and ivy all mixed together.

It would not go away. I was thoroughly convinced that I was going to have to explain the condition to my future wife on our wedding night.

Then somebody suggested calamine lotion. It’s not that the calamine healed this poison condition, but it covered up all the sores and seeping places, and eventually they just dried up and went away.

My mother, who loved to keep track of such thing, maintained that I went through 81 bottles of calamine lotion.

Since that day I have never used calamine again.

But I am very grateful that they came up with the product, and I hope they are equally as satisfied with me purchasing 81 bottles.

 

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix