Sunday, October 11: The A.D.D. Detective
WHEN WORDS AREN’T ENOUGH
by Leigh Lundin
I’ve been thinking about word play this past week. I found one little quiz surprisingly difficult:
Name three English words beginning with ‘dw‘.
Initial Mistake
Several days ago, Deborah asked us to name something about ourselves no one else was likely to know. I answered about a fraud case I helped solve, but another thought struck me– twice I’ve ended up in the wrong restroom and both instances were related to words and tricks of the mind’s eye.
With three sons and three sets of boys’ toys, favorite glassware, and gadgetry, my mother used her fingernail polish to label each item with the letters of our initials, L, G, or R. I suppose over the years I became conditioned to reaching for the item with my initial.
This came with a downside during my consulting days when I found myself in an unfamiliar restaurant in an unfamiliar city. I was frazzled with my mind still on my work when I headed toward the restrooms. I pushed open the ‘comfort station’ door… and found myself staring at a pink room.
No restroom this side of male heterosexuality is ever decorated in pink.
I backed out and glanced at the door to grasp how I could have made such a mistake and found the initial letter L on the door. Of course the door down the hall had an M on it.
Why Guys Don’t Ask for Directions
But God wasn’t through embarrassing me. In Pittsburgh, I gave a technical seminar in a rambling 1800s building in an old industrial section. The structure was brick with oak floors and vast empty rooms, a result of industry drying up in the city.
Calling a break for lunch, I asked my host assistant how to find the restrooms. She said take a couple of rights, a left, pass through a doorway and it would be down the wall on out left.
Talking back over my shoulder, I led my contingent as we navigated the cavernous building. We passed through a doorway and sure enough, ahead on the left I spotted a door with MEN. Still talking over my shoulder to my group, I headed toward the door, pushed it open… and stopped. There sat a group of women with shocked looks on their faces.
Unfortunately, those behind me didn’t expect me to abruptly stop and bump, bump, bump… they pushed me forward into the room. Fortunately, it was an anteroom and we were able to back out without incident.
We discovered we were the victims of two happenstances. First, my host assistant gave us directions to her restroom. She forgot to mention the men’s room was a few feet further and around the corner.
Secondly, we’d come through the doorway into that section looking for the restroom to be on our left. From our angle, the frame of the door blocked out the WO of WOMEN. Talking back over my shoulder, I didn’t see the full word and apparently no one else did either.
And you wonder why guys don’t ask for directions.
Reminds me of something that happened back in 1931… http://tinyurl.com/klvn5o
Unlike Rob, I do remember a couple of embarrassing moments in 1931. Not surprising as a kid of six embarrasses easily. However, it was an incident during the summer of 1945 that remains firmly embedded in my mind. I was at some sort of fair in Belgium during that best of all summers and while relaxing in a two-seater outhouse a pretty young girl my age walked in. She said, “Bonjour,” and went ahead with her reason for being there. Later I tried to find her, hoping to become better acquainted, but failed.
Great movie clip, Rob!
(laughing) When you gotta go, Dick, you gotta go.
>> Name three English words beginning with ‘dw‘.
I thought of two, had to look up the third. Do I get partial points?
You did better than I did, sheena. I was thinking about a Dweeb award. Is 2/3 of a trophy okay?
The dwhat award?
I couldn’t think of one word beginning with “dw.” I wondered if there were any. I went to the dictionary and found three common words I’d spoken or read during the last day. This counts as my latest blush-inducing moment!
You’re not the only one, Jeff!
Name three English words beginning with ‘dw’.
Dwarf, dwelling, dwindle.
Ah, dwelling! I thought of dwarf and dwindle, but gave up when the only other word that came to mind was Dwayne. Is a proper name good for one-sixth credit?
Technically, Fred and Sheena, if you came up with dwarf and dwindle (2 out of 3 is EXCELLENT), you probably also thought of dwarves and dwindles, which, in the rules of Scrabble, are separate words.
J. R. R. Tolkien notwithstanding, the correct plural of dwarf is dwarfs.
But you’ll be pleased to learn, Leigh, that dweeb is in the Oxford English Dictionary, along with dweeby:
dweeb, n. N. Amer. slang.
(dwi:b)
[Prob. f. dw- (arbitrarily, or as in DWARF n.) + FEEB n.; cf. WEED n.]
A person held in contempt, esp. one ridiculed as studious, puny, or unfashionable; a fool. Cf. NERD n.
1982 N.Y. Times 13 June x. 49/4 They try to keep the kids from cut knees, from drowning, from insulting any hoseheads and dweebs on motorcycles. 1985 W. SAFIRE in N.Y. Times Mag. 22 Sept. 14/5 Synonyms for earnest students, or ‘pre-professional dweebs’, are proliferating. 1990 Chicago Tribune 22 July x. 9/4 Any community that can knowingly elect a dweeb like Edwin Eisendrath..as alderman obviously has a precious sense of fun.
Hence 'dweeby a.
1988 Washington Post 4 Mar. d7/2 As the dweeby, narcissistic Blaine, Reeve is male-model handsome and bland—just what the role calls for.
If only I dwew up a first dwaft of this article…
You wascawy wabbit.
I’ll try not to dwell on this.
(My Dictionary is laughing at me, I’m sure!)
This morning at work I answered the phone per usual and immediately spewed coffee everywhere.
“This is Velma with….”
Needless to say I had to ask her to repeat the rest while I tried to hold laughter at bay.
The thoughts running through my mind—alright Leigh….then, this really sounds like a woman, to who put you up to this lady?
Anyway, she was with a lawyer’s office wanting my boss to send an invoice for his expertise…..
I was sort of disappointed.