Tag Archives: penchant

Arboreal

dictionary with letter A

Arboreal: (adj) chiefly of animals living in trees.

Intellectualism often frightens me because it is willing to be stupid for the cause of alleged progress.

To me, one of the ways this shows up is the penchant that the intelligentsia often has in placing the human being into the animal kingdom.

Matter of fact, if you are of a mind to be ridiculed, just walk into a party at a university anywhere in America and suggest that human beings were created instead of spawned from the jungle, hanging in the trees.

Let’s just deal with the arboreal. I’m not even gonna discuss our lack of a tail, our superior intelligence and our deep-rooted emotional and spiritual capacity.

Setting all of that aside, I remember as a child the idea of climbing trees with my friends. It was never very successful. There was always one small child (who might have actually been ape-spawned) who could scurry right up the tree and look down at us mere mortals (yet human) who were standing on the ground, terrified to take the first step.

Most of the people I knew who tried to climb trees ended up with a broken something-or-other. I may be speaking out of school, here–literally–but I don’t think monkeys fall out of trees very often.

Humans, on the other hand, are far more likely to choose that descent.

So based just on tree-climbing ability, unless we have attributed that to the Missing Link, Homo Sapiens have neither the footing, the tail nor the grasp to achieve it very well.

One of my chimpanzee-like friends actually built a treehouse. The rest of us took about two weeks to get up into it, and eventually devised a ladder to acquire participation.

I think it’s good for us to study science, discovering as many different truths as possible. But we also must deal with the reality and the distinctions that exist between us and the animal kingdom.

Then, rather than mocking one another … we can celebrate the blessing of our uniqueness.

 

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Antidote

dictionary with letter AAntidote: (n) a medicine taken or given to counteract a specific poison.

Sometimes I do dorky things just to make sure that people don’t believe I have become divine overnight through a particularly good sleep cycle.

Actually, it is my penchant in life to attempt new things, which always opens the door to the possibility of playing the fool.

I went with my wife and children to Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, where my mother-in-law had retired.

She did not like me.

I don’t know whether it was something actually problematic between us, or if she felt the need to act out the typical plotline for a sitcom between son-in-law and mother-in-law.

She had a house on the beach. So one morning I took the children out to enjoy the ocean, only to discover that the entire landscape was covered with dead jellyfish. Unwilling to be deterred from our sea-time pleasure, and since the jellyfish were up on the shore and not in the water, I let the kids splash around while I sat, carefully watching them,

Meanwhile, more dead and dying jellyfish were washing onto the shore. I didn’t think much about it, until one of them brushed up against me, and with his last aspiration, stung me on the leg.

It didn’t hurt. Kind of a magnified bee sting. But in no time at all, the wound began to swell and I was sick.

It was a strange sense of ill will. I knew I was in trouble.

I made my way up to the house with the kids and told my wife and mother-in-law what had happened. Being a great veteran of the region and the sea, my mother-in-law grabbed some Adolph’s meat tenderizer and spread it on my wound, telling me “that always works.”

It didn’t. I was getting sicker and sicker. My mother-in-law told my wife that I was just being a wimp.

So I finally had to bypass old mom and asked my wife to call the local doctor. He arrived about fifteen minutes later with his satchel, saw the sting and reached in and pulled out one vial of what had to be several hundred of antidote.

He explained that some people are just allergic to jellyfish. By this time I was quite frightened. He calmed me down, gave me an injection, and in a matter of about an hour, I was just fine.

It amazed me that something so small could make you that sick, and that something even smaller could make you better.

I was grateful for the antidote.

But unfortunately, my mother-in-law still thought I was a wimp.

 

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Anatomically Correct

dictionary with letter A

Anatomically correct (adj): {of a doll} having the sexual organs plainly represented.

Humans share two things in common:

  • the need to have something bigger than ourselves
  • and the desire to always be bigger.

It is a mental infestation.

Because in trying to find something bigger than ourselves, we usually come up with some sort of god-figure who is more cantankerous than helpful.

And with the penchant for wanting to be bigger, we often become petty and fussy with one another.

I remember junior high school locker room during shower time–even though the guys sincerely tried to make it clear that they weren’t “gay” or, as we called it at that time–“queer”–we all had a tendency to peek over to see what manly bestowal had been granted to our neighbor.

I guess with girls it revolves around the breasts.

Of course, in junior high school, some guys had bloomed earlier and others had a similar wee-wee to what was afforded them right out of the womb.

So self-conscious, nervous, frustrated and almost paranoid energy permeated the steamy room. And the worst part of it was that the only comfort afforded to your being was discovering someone smaller than you.

Therefore I’m a little bit put off or even intimidated by the notion of “anatomically correct dolls.” Even though they are inanimate objects, in their own way they seem to scoff at me from their pre-determined status.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s saint or sinner, priest or penitent, or prophet or porn star. We are all unnecessarily preoccupied with our presence and prowess in that limited region beneath our belt.

Matter of fact, the criterion for maturity may be a successful ability to ignore such instinct and push past it, creating something of beauty that just might be everlasting.

Here’s what I think about my anatomy:

If it’s working and not trying to kill me, I really don’t want to give it too much attention.

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Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter AAffliction: (n) something that causes pain or suffering

Sometimes Webster is so conventional and bound by society that he (or she?) speaks words in the definition as synonyms which are not necessarily meant to be.

For instance, pain and suffering.

Even though it is a legal term, it is certainly possible to have pain without turning it into suffering. Matter of fact, most of the quality people I have known in my life do deal with some sort of affliction which causes them pain, but they refuse to succumb to the drain of suffering.

Is pain necessary? Let’s rephrase that. Is affliction necessary?

I think there are three things that go into making a good human being:

  1. Talent
  2. Perseverance
  3. Humility

I do not know if it is possible for us to gain the humility to display our persevered talent without overcoming a bit of affliction. After all, we admire the person who wins the race much more after we understand that the course was run while overcoming a sprained ankle.

Maybe it’s sick. Perhaps it’s a penchant we all have for the macabre or the bizarre. But affliction is what proves our mettle and confirms that we have overcome pain without languishing in our suffering.

Because on the other hand, if someone is in pain, and we know they’re anguish is real, after a while we grow impatient if they continually remind us of their suffering.

Affliction is what life gives us to determine our level of passion for our pursuits. It is the badge of honor we wear when taking our place on the victor’s stand. It is the proof that we were not only trained to achieve our goal, but worthy … because we endured to the end.