First off, to all my fellow servers, Happy Please Don't Throw Up in Our Bathrooms Night! To my fellow readers, Happy Cinco De Mayo!
Words are powerful, eh? Even the way we build words is fascinating. I love etymology. Always have. How did we groom today's words from the mixed bastard German/English/French Clustereffed Red Headed Stepchild some of our ancestors spoke in days of yore? The way we say words are interesting. Say quick. Now say slow. Quick has more letters but is faster to pronounce - and slow feels so much like Onomatopoeia, but it's not! It's from the Dutch!
And words can take us from a calm and pleasant morning in our offices in California to New York City almost ten years ago. A woman hears her husband, a man she's known since they both only 16, tell her on the phone over and over again how much he loves her before the building he's in crumbles. Read and listen to the story of how two teenagers met at a school dance and were later reunited when she traveled to go visit him for his birthday.
And read the last entry of a husband and father who was told he had terminal cancer. He asked that his last post be published after he died, which was two days ago. It's a very calm and peaceful post focusing on reflection and love and the future he'll never know.
And the two stories are so very powerful to me because they both share the one four letter word that changes everything for two people: Love. Such a tiny word that packs such a punch. Right angle, circle, 45 degree angle, straight line and three quarters of a circle. It's structured, then loose, then structured, and then, at the end, a combination. A giving and pulling of the letters to make an agreement, a promise, an emotion that is so hard to quell. An infinite amount of possibilities from just four letters, from one person to another.
Two great stories.
And now, for some levity, so that your coworkers might think your running mascara is from all the laughing you'll do:
Jersey Shore in the Style of Oscar Wilde.
I love you, my readers. Have a Love filled day.
