Tag Archives: meeting

Decoupage

Decoupage: (n) the art or technique of decorating something with cut-outs of flat materials over which varnish or lacquer is applied.

I’ve heard it mentioned.

People have threatened to do it.

In the midst of a meeting, it has inspired a whole room, leaving them agog with anticipation.

“We could decoupage.”

The only reason I even knew the definition is that one time, upon leaving such a gathering, feeling ignorant, I looked it up in the dictionary. I also watched a video of what may apparently be the only soul who actually has tackled the process.

Yet it is a favored suggestion. However, when actually placed in the context of the moment, is quickly avoided due to the amount of work it entails.

It’s sticky, it’s messy and after it’s finished, it screams at the top of its lungs:

 “I’m homemade!”

I don’t know how it ever got a reputation for being elegant, cool and “happening.”

But since I feel fairly certain that I will never decoupage anything (and am probably riling up some ardent “decoupagers”) I will stop criticizing the process and declare it an art form—which I hope will make everybody happy.

 

Crop Up

Crop up: (v) to bear or yield a crop; the result

Occasionally, I find myself sitting in a meeting with people from a ‘planning committee,’ and because a certain subject has drawn extensive conversation and disagreement, the chairman of the event will close off the topic by remarking:

“Well, let’s just see what might crop up.”

It is one of those statements we make when we think further debate is more tedious than something that might attack us because we did not prepare for it. Of course, often we are either too smart or too intimidated to settle for such an ambiguous assertion.

For instance, if four or five of my friends and I were standing at the bottom of a mountain, and someone said, “Let’s just climb up,” and one of my buddies responded, “But we don’t have a rope and we’re old and out of shape.” Then if another fellow piped up to object, “Listen, let’s just get started and see what crops up,” truthfully, we would not follow that advice.

Certainly, when we were younger and experimenting with our sexual loins and we became so excited that we were ready to indulge in intercourse with another human being and this partner said, “I hope you don’t mind—I have chlamydia,” the normal reaction would most definitely not be, “That’s ok. Let’s just see what crops up.”

What I’m trying to say is that there are moments when we are of sound mind—even when we seem to be possessed of unsound intentions.

So why can’t we make voting one of those?

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

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