“What’s this with the made up words thing? You can’t just make up words!”
“Why not? I’m an English teacher. Who better to make up words?”
“But you are making up nonsense words, and using them to make fun of Iowegians! That’s, like, racist or something!”
“Iowegians is a made-up word. It is a play on Norway, Ioway, and Norwegian… and because a lot of white people in Iowa are of Scandahoovian descent.”
“See what I mean? Racist! Scandahoovian makes fun of people of Norse descent. That is totally unacceptable!”
“I don’t see it that way. I think we Iowegians should own it. You know, like the way Texas rednecks are proud to be called rednecks. I think that’s far more racist than saying Iowegian or Scandahoovian.”
“Why are we even talking about this? Why couldn’t you have just posted more about your goofy flowers? You have a lot more flower pictures you could use.”
“Yesterday was just a scrapbook sort of entry. I wanted to post a variety of different things to fill space and waste time. My writing goals were already completed for the day yesterday. My novel is at 39,565 words right now.”
“But why did you have to make up gibberish words? Don’t you know enough real words?”
“My Uncle Everett used to use Foobah when he was around the womenfolk so he didn’t say the word he was really thinking and offend Grandma Beyer. That kinda makes it a real word. And you’ve heard me say Futzbatter before. It is a word like Paffooney… something I have used enough that you know what it means without even asking.”
“But what gives you the right to make up words?”
“What gave William Shakespeare the right? Or Lewis Carroll? Remember Jabberwocky?”
“But they were famous writers. They probably earned that right.”
“I’m a writer too. Are you saying I shouldn’t do what great writers do?”
“But you’re not a great… Republican… yes, I meant to say, Republican.”
“I’m not a Republican at all. I’m an independent liberal. I’m a progressive. I believe we need to change things to make the world a better place for all of us. Using new words and changing the language can’t be that bad a thing, can it?”
“We aren’t talking about politics! We’re talking about you making up weird-sounding goofus-doofus words and using them like they actually mean something! You can’t love the language and change it at the same time!”
“Why not? You just did.”
“I did? How?”
“What does goofus-doofus mean?”
“OH! Darn it! Don’t you see what you are doing to me with all your nonsense? You’re making me talk funny too!”
“Speaking of funny talking, do you want to see the new Minions movie with me this afternoon? It is playing at 3:25 at the Webb-Chapel Cinemark 17. There’s a lot of funny talking in that.”
“Dang it! You just posted the time and place you are planning to be. What if that lunatic Winchuk boy decides he wants to use the information to get even with you for his entire seventh-grade year?”
“No chance of that. He can’t read… or tell time. He had me for a teacher.”
At that point the logical left side of my brain doubled up both of his fists and belted the creative right side of my brain in the chin as hard as he could. Of course, that didn’t hurt at all, because both of his fists are metaphorical. What a futzing foobah!
Of course, authors create characters. Even autobiographers create characters. Carl Sandburg could no more make his words into Lincoln than a bird can make its tweets into a cat. Sandburg can, however, help us to understand Lincoln as Carl Sandburg understands the words that are Lincoln.
I, too, have not lived a particularly happy life. But I was always the “teacher with a sense of humor” in the classroom, and students loved me for it. Funny people are often not happy people. But they make themselves out of funny words because laughter heals pain, and jokes are effective medicine. And so I choose to write comedy novels. Novels that are funny even though they are about hard things like freezing to death, losing loved ones, being humiliated, being molested, and fear of death. Magical purple words can bring light to any darkness. I am the words I choose to write in my own story. The words not only reveal me, they make me who I am. And it is up to me to write those words. Other people might wish to do it for me. But they really can’t. The words are for me alone to write.
And so it is imperative that I write my words in the form of my novels, my essays, and this goofy blog post. I am writing myself to life, even if no one ever reads my writing.
Catch a Falling Star 
Nutzy Nuts
Things are not what they seem. Life throws curve balls across the plate ninety percent of the time. Fastballs are rare. And fastballs you can hit are even rarer. But if Life is pitching, who is the batter? Does it change the metaphor and who you are rooting for if the batter is Death?
If you think this means that I am planning on dying because of the bird flu pandemic, well, you would be right. Of course, I am always planning for death with every dark thing that bounces down the hopscotch squares of the immediate future. That’s what it means to be a pessimist. No matter what bad thing we are talking about, it will not take ME by surprise. And if I think everything is going to kill me, sooner or later I have to be right… though, hopefully, much later.
I keep seeing things that aren’t there. Childlike faces keep looking at me from the top of the stairs, but when I focus my attention there, they disappear. And I know there are no children in the house anymore since my youngest is now legally an adult. And the chimpanzee that peeked at me from behind the couch in the family room was definitely not there. I swear, it looked exactly like Roddy McDowell from the Planet of the Apes movies, whom I know for a fact to be deceased. So, obviously, it has to be Roddy McDowell’s monkey-ghost. I believe I may have mentioned before that there is a ghost dog in our house. I often catch glimpses of its tail rounding the corner ahead of me when my own dog is definitely behind me. And I am sure I shared the facts before that Parkinson’s sufferers often see partial visions of people and faces (and apparently dogs) that aren’t really there, and that my father suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. So, obviously it is my father and not me that is seeing these things… He’s just using my eyeballs to do it with.
But… and this is absolutely true even if it starts with a butt… the best way to deal with scary possibilities is to laugh at them. Jokes, satire, mockery, and ludicrous hilarity expressed in big words are the proper things to use against the fearful things you cannot change. So, this essay is nothing but a can of mixed nutz. Nutzy nuts. And fortunately, peanut allergies are one incurable and possibly fatal disease I don’t have. One of the few.
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Filed under commentary, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, satire, wordplay
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