I’m 84 ½ years of age, which means that over the course of my life, I have taken more than a billion breaths and have lived more than one-third the number of years that America has officially been a nation and a republic. I write “84 ½” because when we’re little, we say, “I’m four-and-a quarter.” “I’m four-and-a-half,” etc. Well, after 80, we start doing that again.
If you’re a young whippersnapper in your mid 70’s, I have names for your years coming up: 76 is your trombone year (“76 trombones led the big parade”). 77 is your Sunset Strip year (“77 Sunset Strip”). 78 is your long-playing record year. 79 is your prime year (79 is a prime number) and your golden year (79 is the atomic number for the element gold).
The most pyrotechnic prey on words is when you turn 80. That’s your pirate year (“Aye, matey!” Say it aloud).
I am a proud alumnus of Haverford College, whose campus sits just outside of Philadelphia. For West Coasters, our motto is “We haven’t heard of you either.” I played football for Haverford, but the sport was discontinued in 1973. Now the college supplies T-shirts that boast “Haverford College: Undefeated in football since 1973!”
At Haverford, I was a pre-medical student aiming to major in Chemistry, but I soon found that I was reading the chemical formulas for their literary value. I realized that something was wrong; so, at the eleventh hour, I switched to English as my concentration. Ever since, I have earned my bread as an English major.
You know the jokes:
- What do you say to an English major after graduation? “I’ll have fries with that burger.”
- What’s the difference between a bird and an English major? A bird can make a deposit on an automobile.
- Don’t laugh derisively at us English majors, or we’ll squirt less foam on your lattes.
Chuckle chuckle, snort snort, but sadly, in U.S. colleges since 2010, English majors have become an endangered species. In fact, the number of bachelors degrees in the humanities and the arts has decreased by 33%. At the same time, degrees in computer science, engineering, and mathematics have consistently burgeoned. Perhaps STEM (Science Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) needs to pick up STEAM (Science Technology Engineering, Arts, Mathematics). Why? Because underlying every occupation is the study of the human adventure, and understanding what it means to be a human being is a lot more crucial than maximizing earning power..
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I have always loved to write and was editor of my junior high school literary magazine and my high school newspaper. For me, writing is like throwing a Frisbee. You can play Frisbee catch with yourself, but it’s repetitious and not much fun. Better it is to fling to others, to extend yourself across a distance.
At first, your tossing is awkward and strengthless. But, with time and practice and maturity, you learn to set your body and brain and heart at the proper angles, to grasp with just the right force and not to choke the missile. You discover how to flick the release so that all things loose and wobbly snap together at just the right moment. You learn to reach out your follow-through hand to the receiver to ensure the straightness and justice of the flight.
And on the just-right days, when the sky is blue and the air pulses with perfect stillness, all points of the Frisbee spin together within their bonded circle — and the object glides on its own whirling, a whirling invisible and inaudible to all others but you.
Like playing Frisbee, writing is a re-creation-al joy. For me, a lot of the fun is knowing that readers out there — you among them — are sharing what I have made. I marvel that, as you pass your eyes over these words, you experience ideas and emotions similar to what I was thinking and feeling when, in another place and another time, I struck the symbols on my keyboard.
Like a spinning, gliding Frisbee, my work extends me beyond the frail confines of my body. Thank you for catching me.
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Wordle, the word game that has become the rage among wordaholics, verbivores, and logolepts, was the most-searched term internationally in 2022, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. Apparently, recreational linguistics is alive and thriving in the landscape of our leisure time.
The most googled names were Ukraine and Queen Elizabeth.