February 20, 2020
DACTYLOLOGY
I miss my older brother Billy.
He once bought the book,
30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary,
and then for the next month he drove
us all crazy with big words.
So I got a dictionary.
did some research,
and then said to him,
“You’re obfuscating
instead of elucidating.”
He then asked me if I wanted to be
a sesquipedalian. I asked him
what that meant?
He answered, “It’s being
a person who uses big words,
dummy.”
“Oh!”
I wish he was still alive –
because I would now tell him that I was
hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobic?
I’m sure he would then say,
“So you have a fear of hippos?”
"No', I would say, “It’s fear of big words.”
He’d would then
say,
“You just have to learn to flob?”
I’d then say,
“Oh, ok, now what does it mean to flob?”
He’d then say,
“Flob is both a noun and a verb.
It means to just spit or flob it out!”
He’d then say,
“Okay. Quid pro quo.
Use smaller words and
I’ll speak in English.”
“Oh!”
I miss my brother Billy.
He died too soon.
51 - from skin cancer.
He’d say, “Melanoma.”
I went to his grave
at Gate of Heaven Cemetery
near Washington D.C. several times
with his best friend,
a Jewish guy named Marty Goldberger.
In dactylology we were both
saying by being there, “We miss you.”
“Dactylology? Dactylology?
I could hear him saying,
"Why can’t you just say, 'Sign language'”?
© Andy Costello, Reflections 2020
