I, Spooner

Every now and then, it's my job to tell you something odd and interesting about myself. So, today, I tell you this: I love Spoonerisms.

Spoonerisms (so named for Reverend William Archibald Spooner, 1844–1930, who exemplified the quirk) occur when one transposes the initial sounds of a group of words, sometimes forming new ones, (e.g., sly gap --> guy slap.) My favorites are the ones that add new meaning or commentary to the original.

The thing is, I'm doing this constantly. As I'm shopping, I reach for a packet of bound grief at the meat display. When Deborah requests that I be on dish duty, I ponder whether I should wash dishes or dash wishes. Some of them even make it out of my head, like telling a giggling Fiona that we should have named her "Sue Tilley."

Over the years, I've been mentally gathering material for a story where one of the main characters talks in nothing but Spoonerisms, and, at the end, says something completely normal, which, no one realizes until it's almost too late, was another Spoonerism, setting the scene for the final climactic actiony bit. (The setting is, of course, a greasy spoon...er.)

So, that's one quirky thing that's always going on in my head. What's going on in yours?

Things Promised: A Dream

I wrote down this dream about three years ago, a few days before New Year's in 2006. It was raw then, and it's still a bit raw now. I still think about this, years later...

I had a dream last night.

I dreamed that I was in a beautiful glass corner office, with sunlight streaming in to a pile of small, wire-bound books on my desk, some of them as small as a few inches across. I was talking on the phone with a woman, and whatever easygoing charm I could muster was not working in this client relationship. I had missed a deadline, apparently, largely because I had paid no attention to the job, agreeing to do it, with the idea that I could easily pull it off "In my spare time."

Her words stung.

"I don't know how you do this. Your references all give you far more credit than you earned. They all say things like, he did a good job, except for that incident with the blue paint, or that bit with the skylight; how was that involved in what you were designing, anyway?"

Her voice trailed away as I picked up two of the other receivers that had been sitting on my desk, and I tried listening to them at the same time. One was a man who had obviously been talking for some time, under the impression that I had been listening, and had just realized five seconds before I picked up that I wasn't, and I had no clue. What had I promised him, anyway? The phone cords snaked about my desk, wrapped around my wrists as I went from one to the other.

"Look," said the woman's voice, "I'm trying to help you here. You've obviously got talent, but it's going to be taken away if you don't use it." The little green book stared out at me: Things Promised. I had to write them all down. I had to do them. I had to not forget them.

I awoke, wracked with the burden of many things I had said I would do, but didn't. How many things had I promised? How many little jobs had God brought me, and I had botched, because I thought I had more time than I did? Could I even list them all? Were those things going to be taken away now, and given to someone else?

Mentally, I took that little green book, and began to write...

New Year's Eve

Something sparkly...

...something bubbly...

...something unexpected:

(If you can't see it, the video is here.)

I totally wasn't expecting Risanna to take her first steps right then, but she did — Paul and I were playing with her while Deborah was on the phone with Abby, and she just stood up, let go of Paul's hands, and walked over to me. We were both stunned, and called Deborah over. Paul took the video a few minutes later with his new camera.

Resolutions, introspection, political analysis, prestidigitation, predilections, prognostication, and predictions? Not really my style.

Happy New Year, everyone!