confessions of a vocabulary snob...

Today I would like to invite you into my world. Not my outside world, my brain world. My inside world where I form thoughts that may or may not make sense. It is a scary place.

The following is a record of a faux paux. My faux paux. Not my finest hour.
Read it all in one breath (or out loud) as if I were telling it to you face to face. It might actually make sense that way...
--------------------------------------
why did I say it?
you feel like it is a safe place...you want to contribute to the
conversation...hey, you want people to think you actually know something.
You bypass the fact that you are sitting in a room with a teacher, a
lawyer, and an engineer...
you do get credit for first saying "forgive my ignorance" but after
that you just blurt out what you discover later could be the stupidest
thing ever said.
at least it wasn't world politics or anything like that...then again
maybe world politics would have been a better venue because you could
have taken refuge in the dream that maybe YOU are the ever-elusive
undiscovered political genius of the current age...ahh, that would
have been nice...to leave them guessing...wondering at your wit.
Now you know that they are wondering all right...wondering at how you
go about your day with only half of one. (wit that is...)
Again I will state that it wasn't or at least shouldn't have been a big
deal. But it is...a big deal...
because I am kicking myself...because I am sitting here...in a soon to
be puddle of tears...agonizing..."why oh why God? why did it have to
happen?"
me...revealed....unveiled....uncut...LIVE and in full view...
maybe I thought it was a word from the Lord.
maybe it was...and he is giggling now...like when your kid says
HEY LOOK AT THAT BIG F*** when you have been trying and trying to
teach him to say Big Truck but he just cant seem to say that TR sound.
and you giggle...because he is young and precious and cute...and you
are horrified that he will say it really really loud in public.
Or you giggle secretly when your same precious offspring says....and
this time IN PUBLIC...
"hey mommy look at the kids with the chocolate heads" (meaning of
course the African-American people just down the isle from you in Target)
you want to die...but you giggle inside because again...he is so young
and cute and innocent.
So I am going to claim that for myself...last night I was fully
operating as my young, cute, innocent self when we were talking about
glass blowing and I said...
"pardon my ignorance (which I really didn't mean exactly but was trying
to cover my behind JUST IN CASE but I was thinking I really did have a
word from the Lord or better yet my own personal genius...yes I admit
it, I thought I had pulled it out of oblivion, or out of the vast
resources of my fertile intellect)
I said..."I think the word for that is fromage. "
yes folks...you so highly esteemed to be learned and intelligent...
fromage. go look it up if you must but I think that EVERYONE here
knows that fromage means
CHEESE!
cheese! good grief!!!! not a fancy french word for shoe, or donkey, or
wallpaper....CHEESE!
and a common word to boot.
AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I feel so pitiful, so low, so humiliated.
I just needed to share with you all... to find comfort and solace in
your love and understanding. To be here with you where I can count on
you to help me find the pieces of my shattered bleeding heart.
Help me....
I am confessing my arrogance...and revealing the pale white underbelly
of my pride...it will lead to my downfall...
can you restore me...
is there any hope?

I love you all...
B

In case none of that made sense here is the short of it...
I was sitting in a room with some very intelligent (as in book learned) people. We were talking (these highly intelligent people and I) about glass blowing, specifically when they make these little glass animals. And the word fromage came to my head...so I said it.

Why it came to my head is a complete mystery to me. It just popped in. I said I wasn't sure about it....
one almost unrecoverable tragical thing about this whole thing...
the smarty smart lawyer man to whom the fromogenous comment was directed tried to save me. He looked me smack in the eye and said "well, if it doesn't mean that (glass-blowing) it could mean cheese." and I nodded me head and said "sure, ok"...and I didn't pick up on it. Not for a second. But the word just bounced around my head...fromage...fromage....fromage....until finally hours later it exploded into a drippy splat of fromogarious goo as my brain woke up from soundest sleep and uttered "CHEESE". Oh sweet potato soup...what had I DONE?????!!!!!

the next day I searched and searched on the internet...trying in vain to cover my large and unfortunately exposed behind...no luck. Google could not come up with one single way that fromage could mean glass.... it means cheese...ever. single. time. ugh...
I have yet to recover.

And that, is my sad sad story.