Fable

This fable has two morals.  The first is general and umbrella-like:  When your nine-year old is in good spirits at the breakfast table, GO WITH IT.  Rarely does he make me laugh during breakfast, but today he did.

"Mom, " he announced, "I made up a story with a moral.  It goes like this:"  (Imagine his voice lowering a couple octaves here, and his normal language becoming more formal.)

"There was once a painter who painted a portrait of a king.  When he finished, the painter turned the picture around for the king to see.  'Lovely!' said the king.  But then the king looked more closely.  'WHY DID YOU PAINT A MOLE ON MY CHIN?' he roared.  Then, he proceeded to cut the painter's head off."

"Can you tell what the moral is?" said R.

"Don't paint the mole on the king's face?" I said.

"Nope!"

"Then what's the lesson?"

"Don't put disgusting things in pictures!"

Coffeepiphany

This story comes from long ago in my youth.  College years, to be precise.

I worked for Big Coffee, and it was a great job.  The job, along with my parents, got me through college with zero debt, and their insurance plan was good enough that I could indulge my hypochondria whenever I wanted.

At the time (this is going to date me), there were only eleven Starbucks stores in the Portland/Vancouver area.  On any given day, a store employee somewhere in the district was sick, playing sick, or going to a concert and couldn't work their shift.  Then managers would call around and get someone to fill in.  So, I worked at every store in Portland.

Several times, I filled shifts at the NW 23rd store.  This was the old 23rd store...before they moved down the street next to Coffee People and stomped them in the ground! (Yessss.)  This was the place to work if you wanted to see a cross-section of Portland culture in the 1990s, when the city was coming into its own, and where it's still stuck.  To a naive 19-year-old, most of the customers seemed aggressive - almost baleful - in their quest to be unique.  Besides, when they approached me, they hadn't had their coffee yet.

Well, one day, in the midst of all these people, a homeless man walked up to the bar.  He was big and black and his corneas were yellow; I asked him how I could help.

"Kee," he said.

"Kee?"  I looked behind myself at the menu board.  There was nothing on there that could be interpreted, "kee".

"Coffee?" I asked.

"Kee."

I grabbed a coffee cup and held it out to him.

"Kee."  His voice was soft, but his eyes looked a bit desperate. I passed him a pad of paper.  I was so addled from all the other customers (Should I smile at this one? Will he yell at me if I call him sir?  Is that a man?) that I didn't have brains enough to decipher his code.

He took the pad and drew a key.  It was simple but pretty, like an old skeleton key.

"Key!"  I said.  He nodded.  I was stumped.  Why did he come in a coffee shop wanting a key?  Finally, after a few more pleading looks, he shuffled back out the door.  And I kept working and got through college and quit selling coffee and got married and had kids.

Last month, eighteen years later, I was driving somewhere in the car, radio off, when I smacked my forehead and groaned.

He wanted the bathroom key.  He needed the bathroom.  I still feel sorry for that guy.

Adjectives

I'm sure most of you are aware of this, but at every year-end, Lake Superior State University publishes a list of ten words people have used or misused completely to death.  Therefore, the University bans them.

(This year, for the first time, the list contains words I've never heard.  I'm glad, because that means I no longer have my finger on the pulse of popular culture.  Maybe now I can just walk away and let it die.)

One of the common words this year is "amazing."  Everything people talk about, from omelets to garden soil, is just amazing.  "Occupy," of course, made the list, which is a mercy.

I'm thrilled that "Man Cave" is banned.  The term implies that men are subterranean peabrains who loiter in a hole with their odds and ends, and none of the men I know behave like that.

Today, though, my second-grade son coined a term that should be used liberally, worldwide.  We were discussing adjectives, and I asked him to think of something he could describe with adjectives.  He wasn't thrilled about the exercise, but at my urging he chose to write about a dragon.

Scaly, he wrote, then black, mad, smoky, scary, etc.  He started getting tired of adjectives.

"One more," I urged, "What about an adjective for how he smells?"

"Bad," he offered.

"'Bad' is boring," I said, handing him the thesaurus, "Look up bad and find a better word."  He's handy with a dictionary, so we found bad.

"Look!"  I said, pointing at a bunch of synonyms, "Dreadful, horrid, horrible, putrid -"

"Great!," he said, slapping the book shut.  He scribbled his last word on the paper and ran from the room.  I peeked at the paper.

Hortrid.

As in...Determined not to hurt Aunt Mabel's feelings, little Jimmy swallowed whole forkfuls of her hortrid casserole, all the while breathing through his mouth.

Or, "Open the window.  The dog just had hortrid gas."