Words With Friends

My artistic impulses have always left me wanting for a new medium in which to express myself. I’ve spent time immersed in pencil drawing, wood carving, music, and now writing.

I began writing about five years ago and in that time my vocabulary has increased tenfold. There are occasions when after rereading what I wrote I think, “Who wrote that?”

Not only had I learned to express myself in new ways, I’ve also recognized that certain words I used to use don’t even exist. For example:

• “Warsh” as in, ”Go warsh your hands.”
• “Alblum” as in “I like The Beatles – Abbey Road alblum.”
• And my kids all time favorite is “Syrp” as in “Pass the maple syrp.”

Gifted with some sort of a Southside Chicago accent and limited language skills I often rely on my wife’s help when struggling to find the best way to illustrate a thought. Unlike myself, she has a wide vocabulary—she’s a logophile, one of those Scrabble players who uses all seven letters at once to create words I had never heard before in my life. It’s even hard to pronounce some of the words she suggests.

I think I know what it means to write in the first person, but not always so sure about using the second or third-person point of view. I’m confused with the correct use of hyphens, en dashes, em dashes, semicolons, colons, ellipses, and parentheses. Are they really all necessary? In my mind its like having a half dozen of the same sized screw drivers in my tool box.

I’ve decided not to let my lack of proper grammar hold me back. I’m just going to write what I feel, let my wife help when she can and when I reach an impasse I’m going to clear my mind by sitting down to a tall stack of “pannacakes” smothered in blueberry “syrp.”

 Photo credit: arripay / Foter.com / CC BY-SA