The morning is cloudy and chilly. The backyard has bare trees and a deep carpet of dead leaves. The lawn and deck are covered in brown leaves with curled edges. Gone are the glorious colors of fall. Drab winter is making a headway.

Yesterday I waxed the kitchen floor and hall. I dusted the living room. I am exhausted. Housework does not become me. My flamingo is now a turkey. He is wearing a pilgrim hat, a coat with a turkey tail and has a wattle.

My dance card is full this week with 4 uke events and company coming. I have already planned dinner, and I have a dessert to make or even two if I get really ambitious.

Language changes. Words and phrases are added as others disappear and are lost in time. When I was a kid, other kids had cooties. It was one of the worst insults. We even made cootie catchers out of pieces of paper. Cars were parked by Spot Pond for the submarine races. I really believed there were races. I never noticed all the steamed windows, and I doubt I would have known why if I had. We had party poopers and wet rags. We used to cluck at other kids and call them chicken. My father went to the can. My mother used to say everything is copacetic. I knew what a beatnik was because we watched Doobie Gillis. I remember yelling dibs when I wanted to ride shotgun. Don’t have a cow. Don’t be a fink. I wore pedal pushers and guys wore pegged pants. You gave someone the bird.

Lately I have noticed a few new phrases. People don’t die anymore. They are unalive. I’m hearing the phrase I’m not going to lie peppered in conversations. It always seems to come before an opinion. “Do you want to come with?” Dude is now ubiquitous.

I know I’ve told you before about Ghanaian English. It is both colorful and wonderfully descriptive. “ I went to your house and met your absence,” is my all time favorite. I wasn’t home sounds drab in comparison. “I’m going to come,” my students would say as they were leaving my house. They would return. Obroni waaru was loosely translated as dead white man clothes which were sold in the markets and thought to be castoffs or charity contributions.

I will always be a lover of words.

This entry was posted on November 4, 2024 at 11:50 am and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.