Tag Archives: Promised Land

Cutlet

Cutlet: (n) a slice of meat, especially of veal, for broiling or frying.

One of the more shocking aspects of life is when you escape your childhood home and begin to mingle with the pilgrims on the way to the Promised Land, discovering that all the things you heard in your house did not translate into the lives of other beings.

For instance, my mother used to say, “Don’t freeze your typooker.”

As a child, I assumed there were typookers from sea to shining sea.

But the first time I spoke it aloud in front of friends, post-high-school graduation, they laughed voraciously, and hee-hawed even more when I became defensive. No one had heard of typooker (though one girl thought it was something naughty.)

So I was surprised when I realized that the pressed-together hamburger/ground round patties I was familiar with as a child were universally referred to as “cutlets.”

During my growing up years, we called them “cube steaks.”

I don’t know whether this was wishful thinking in the minds of my impoverished parents—musing that referring to them as steak translated them during dinner time—or if they had run across a cult of “cubers,” which they immediately  joined, touting fake steak.

But it was embarrassing.

I was on a date with a girl and asked the waiter if they had some sort of cube steak. He looked at me, much more bewildered than necessary, and humiliatingly asked, “Could you draw a picture of it?”

My date for the evening, instantaneously sure she would never go out with me again, mercifully stepped in and said:

“I think you’re talking about a cutlet.”

Prideful and unwilling to sacrifice the turf, I responded, “No. I’m talking about cube steaks.”

At an impasse, the waiter suggested the beef stew (if I had ever heard of beef or stew). I was bruised.

Language is so powerful, yet so personal.

And it is so easy to convince ourselves that the words in our mouths are much more sacred than those lodged deep in the throats of our brothers and sisters.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Annihilate

dictionary with letter A

Annihilate: (v) to destroy utterly; obliterate.

Universally, historically, chemically, spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally and internationally, “destroy” is one of those words that is part of the three heads of evil.

Linking with “kill” and “steal,” it forms the only empire of darkness of which I am aware.

And even though we like to focus on extreme examples of destroying by citing genocide or even ecological malfeasance, we do better if we embrace the danger of sinister activity in our own breast instead of attributing it to villains.

What am I doing to annihilate anything in my life? What am I destroying which, if I would cease to do so, would enhance my possibilities and the people around me?

It’s a powerful thought.

The first thing I have to overcome is my defensiveness and fear of being exposed as a destroyer.

The second goal would be to accept the fact that even a little destruction is annihilating something of importance.

So I will busy myself today with a bit of analyzing on this issue.

  • Of course, we are all in danger of annihilating ourselves through bad habits.
  • Some form of annihilation is inevitable when we maintain prejudice, which lends itself to bigotry.
  • And even the acceptable position of being opinionated tends to annihilate fresh ideas from peppering our minds.

We must be willing to forgive ourselves.

After all, we sat in Sunday School as children hearing stories of the Children of Israel annihilating whole tribes in order to gain the Promised Land.

We read about the thousands of casualties during the Civil War, fought in our homeland, never considering the individual soldier.

And of course, none of us were present for the terror of the first two atomic bombs, which annihilated a pair of cities and hundreds of thousands of people.

To annihilate is the killing edge of not giving a damn.

To avoid it, I must be willing to consider where calloused reasoning has made me susceptible to such treachery.

 

 

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