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