Spectacular!

"How are you?"

 

"Fine."

 

Eighty-five percent of the time, this is how this exchange goes.  It's a formality, a cliche.  Honestly, no one usually really wants to hear a recital of symptoms or problems as a result of asking that question.  Well, it could depend.  But, generally speaking, it's just an acknowledgement of the other person's existence, a conversation opener. 

 

I noticed after my father died that my mother always responded to that question with "Okay."  Formerly, she had always said, "Fine."  I couldn't really blame her.  It was her way of acknowledging the change in her well-being that my father's absence made in her life after fifty-three years of near-constant companionship.

 

My recently widowed mother-in-law responded bravely the other day with, "I'm fine--enough." 

 

I totally respect where they are coming from.  This posting is not about them.

 

It's about something else that recently came to my attention whichI have been thinking about.  I have found that a new acquaintance always responds with, "Spectacular!"  Not just once, in a really good moment, but, consistently.  How great is that?

 

She is young and pretty, and seems like a nice person.  I don't doubt that she is spectacular.  But, obviously, I've been around long enough to know that no one feels spectacular all the time. 

 

But how would it be to be in the habit of saying so?

 

Is she lying, some of the time?  Trying to impress?  I don't think so.  Here's what I think.

 

Our feelings are often preceeded by our thoughts.  Our experiences are often informed by our expectations.  What if we thought of ourselves as spectacular?  What if we expected our day to be spectacular?  How would that impact our actual feelings and experiences?  I started wanting to say, "Spectacular!" back to her.  Not out of envy, or just to compete, but in order to improve my own day.

 

I tried it a few times.  I didn't really observe people's reactions, but felt my own.  Is my life not really spectacular?  I live in a great place, I have a job, many people love me. I have the freedom to do so many things I want to do.  I am well.  I have pretty much all I need.  What is not spectacular about that?

 

As Viktor Frankl taught us, even the rare person in a concentration camp could control his feelings and find gratitude for small things through managing his thoughts.  How much more, then, is there an onus on me to do so?

 

My new acquaintance came up to me today and shyly made a confession.  Her usually curled hair was in a pony-tail.  She was wearing glasses, unlike before.  "Today," she said, "I'm not spectacular." 

 

We laughed.  She had given herself permission to have a down day, and I reinforced that by giving her mine. 

 

Such is life.

 

But I'm still impressed enough to give her a shout-out in my blog.

Homophone Contest

One night, the children and I pulled something new out of the oven.  It looked like a casserole with bread crumbs on top.  It turned out to be somewhat soupy. 

My children know that there will always be new foods to try--their father has an insatiable need for variety.  One of them will eat and relish anything put in front of her.  Some of the others are wary. 

A discussion ensued about what was in the new dish.  White beans were discovered, and chard.

"Chard Soup," I proclaimed.  It was actually quite tasty, which I have come to expect.

"Chard Vegetable Soup," a child who takes after his father said, to improve upon my title.  Paul is very good at improving upon the clever things I try to say.

"Well, since chard is a vegetable. . ." the editor in me started.

"Oh!" he said.  I thought you meant "Charred Soup."  Even though it wasn't at all burned.

We had a good laugh.

And I was reminded all over again of the homophone contest I never entered.  Charred and chard would have been a pair I probably would not have come up with in fourth grade.  But, it's a goodie!

I blogged about the homophone contest a year-and-a-half ago.  (See "That Hole in Your Soul.)  I still hadn't made a list.  And I still hadn't bought myself a king-sized candy bar.  I supposed I should make a bucket list and put those two things on there.

Better yet, since that would involve making a list, anyway, I might as well just make the darned homophones list.  So, the next night at dinner, I invited my children to join me.  They were all excited, not just about the prospect of a king-sized candy bar, but about competing at completing a homophones list.  Who wants to bet that charred and chard end up at the top of each list?

We spent the next week carefully not talking about the homophones we came up with for our lists.  "I have six!" my baby would beam.  The oldest boy kept a careful list on his iPad.  We did talk about some rules.  Proper names were out, as were foreign words, unless they have been adopted into our language--like taco, which, of course, doesn't have a homophone.  We discussed that words that just have variant spellings are not homophones, nor are different meanings of words spelled the same.  

Because two of my children had access to the Internet, and the others didn't, I made a rule that we couldn't "cheat" by looking at reference materials that would help us.  The homophones had to spring from our own minds. 

My husband weighed in on rules he thought should exist for the contest, but, since he wasn't playing (his choice) and no one had appointed him judge (my choice), those may or may not have stuck.  I reminded him a couple of times that he was not in charge.

Because there is a large diversity of ages among my children (and because I totally intended to win this contest like I didn't before), I decided that we would all be winners--anyone who made an effort would be rewarded.  As the week progressed, my baby bragged that he had thought of seventeen pairs of homophones in the exact same voice that my teenaged son bragged about having over one hundred.

My most anxious child asked me several times how many I had.  "I'm on my tenth," I would say vaguely.  He didn't know I meant tenth column.  I didn't want anyone to get discouraged.

At the end of the week, all the lists were presented.  

And, as everyone had done her or his best, each received a king-sized candy bar for effort.  

I was proud of my kids but also dismayed to learn that they had thought up sixty-two homophone pairs that I had not thought of.  How could I have forgotten flour and flower?  Those were so. . .fourth grade!  In fact, I'm pretty sure they were on my fourth grade list that never got completed. 

My husband came home from work at that point and reminded me that weather and whether are not pronounced the same way.  I had taken all my "wh" words off my list when he'd said that earlier in the week, but then I had found an official list of English homophones, and those "wh" and "w" pairs were on it.  So, I put them back.  

The official list had words paired as homophones that I would never say the same way, such as "aren't" and "aunt."  I took those off the official count.  We would never have come up with those!  

I told my husband about the official list and its sometimes strange pairings.  "I decided to go with my own dialect," I told him. 

"I go by the standard pronunciation," my last-worder said, as though one English dialect could be standard and all the rest not.  

My husband grew up in another state, and we just simply say "laurel" and "peony" differently.  As both pronunciations can be found in the dictionary, I choose to consider them both right but just different.  He chooses to consider his way to be correct.

As judge for my contest, I decided that if I--or the kids--pronounce two words the same way, they could be considered homophones.  And we all won. 

I had come up with 284 pairs of homophones.  My kids each had somewhere between 21 and 188 pairs by the end. Together, they came up with 62 pairs I had not thought of.  So, collectively, we came up with 346, which was 86% of the standard list.  And, yes, charred and chard were on all of our lists.

Not bad at all, and that hole in my soul is now filled.  Not to mention my belly.