My Beloved Dictionary
1964- 2017
This dictionary may have been older than this but it has been in my family position since 1964. My sister first owned it. It was a hard back copy of a Webster's dictionary. It was about 3 inches thick and it always looks like it was 100 years old.
Some days, I would just look through this book and see how many words I knew and didn't know. Mostly, I didn't know words. I kept my dictionary by my reading chair so I could look up words I read but didn't know.
I carried it with me to Brandywine College and then to Drexel University and then to Penn State. It came back with me to Philadelphia while I lived in my parent's house and tried to figure out what to do with my life. It came with me when I went back to Penn State to earn a Master's degree. Then it moved to Williamsport with me. It sat on my shelf in Jenkintown and back to Penn State again and then in Stroudsburg and Springfield. It made it to my move to Carpenter's Point even though I was downsizing and no longer using it. The digital age made this book obsolete.
Now, I am downsizing yet again and the emotional hold of this book clings to me. What should I do with it? I'M NOT TAKING IT WITH ME!!!! I only have 800 sq. feet of space. But no one wants a dictionary anymore. I can't even donate it with a clear conscience. It would just be thrown out behind my back.
So I burn it. I through it in my wood burning stove. But first, I rip out a page as just a small token of a time when roamed through a jungle of words.
flapdoodle: nonsense
flapdragon: an old game in which the players snatch raisins and plums out of a burning brandy and eat them.
Flagellata- a class of protozoa distinguished by having one or more long mobile filaments as locomotory organs.
flaggy- drooping
flagitious- shameful wicked
1964- 2017
This dictionary may have been older than this but it has been in my family position since 1964. My sister first owned it. It was a hard back copy of a Webster's dictionary. It was about 3 inches thick and it always looks like it was 100 years old.
Some days, I would just look through this book and see how many words I knew and didn't know. Mostly, I didn't know words. I kept my dictionary by my reading chair so I could look up words I read but didn't know.
I carried it with me to Brandywine College and then to Drexel University and then to Penn State. It came back with me to Philadelphia while I lived in my parent's house and tried to figure out what to do with my life. It came with me when I went back to Penn State to earn a Master's degree. Then it moved to Williamsport with me. It sat on my shelf in Jenkintown and back to Penn State again and then in Stroudsburg and Springfield. It made it to my move to Carpenter's Point even though I was downsizing and no longer using it. The digital age made this book obsolete.
Now, I am downsizing yet again and the emotional hold of this book clings to me. What should I do with it? I'M NOT TAKING IT WITH ME!!!! I only have 800 sq. feet of space. But no one wants a dictionary anymore. I can't even donate it with a clear conscience. It would just be thrown out behind my back.
So I burn it. I through it in my wood burning stove. But first, I rip out a page as just a small token of a time when roamed through a jungle of words.
flapdoodle: nonsense
flapdragon: an old game in which the players snatch raisins and plums out of a burning brandy and eat them.
Flagellata- a class of protozoa distinguished by having one or more long mobile filaments as locomotory organs.
flaggy- drooping
flagitious- shameful wicked
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