Use Your Words
Michelle and I have an ongoing discussion over what to call the certain tools in the kitchen. What is a spreader, and how does a spreader differ from a lifter. What of the spatula? Is a scraper just another name for a spreader? Is a muddler just a fancy word for a stick used to stir. My inside voice prods me here, you mean a stir stick? Yes, that’s it. That’s the ticket.
My brother Brent tells a story, boy does he ever tell a story or two, about a friend of his who he has known for over 50 years. This friend we will call Frag, chiefly because that is what his friends call him. Frag was working as a shop teacher in a high school. He calls to one of his students to bring him a wrench. What kind of wrench, asks the student?
Doesn’t matter. I’m going to use it as a hammer.
I love that story. When children are young, we hear mothers instruct them to “Use your words.” This instruction, or is it an admonishment, can be applied to many situations. The politician trying hard to not say anything. Mustn't say too much. Mustn’t tell the truth. Be vague. Beat around the bush. Bush beat around the bush. A thousand points of light. Read my lips. Weapons of mass destruction. I know. I’m mixing up my Bushes.
The senior, or as I like to call him - me, searches to find the right word. It is on the tip of my tongue, slightly submerged in my brain, lying just below the surface, I can almost picture it. The first letter is…it hides in the weeds, somehow unreachable.
Use your words. 30 minutes later, the word comes to me, the conversation long gone, but here I am with the ungraspable thought, the missing words rising from the swamp that is my brain.
I’ve always had issues with pronouns. Confusion. I look back on old lyrics, and the pronouns and point of views shifting like soup. What was he trying to say? He being I, me becoming they. First person to third person. Who is telling the story here? The possible narrators shift in and out of view. I, me, they, him, his, she, her, they, them.
Use your words.
I liked how Bob Dole referred to himself in the third person. In a 1996 appearance on Saturday Night Live, he jokingly denied the habit to Norm Macdonald, saying: "That's not something Bob Dole does.“
I was not a fan of Bob Dole’s politics. As a personality he was engaging, funny, a man with a wounded charisma, his pen always clenched tightly in his right hand. His Bob Dole third person. His eyebrows. The great comic Norm MacDonald had him down perfectly.
William Saletan,in Mother Jones, brilliantly described him, “Dole’s anger wouldn’t seem so dark if his appearance weren’t so menacing. His left eyebrow hangs thick and low, so that when he tilts his head down and gazes forward, a dark pupil floats up to the shaggy ridge, glaring out of the hollow of its socket. His gravelly voice, an uninflected baritone, churns like a chain saw in low gear. His delivery style is a vicious deadpan. After firing off a volley, his lips, instead of curling into a kidding smile, hang open humorlessly and then swing shut like the torpedo door of a submarine.”
How did I get on to Bob Dole? I was talking about words. Using your words. I guess what I’m trying to say, in my own broken way, is that this past ten days have been an emotional rollercoaster.
It started with Lump. Or as the doctors call him, metatastic squamous cell carcinoma keratinization. 5 words.
Simply put, Lump. Or cancer.
There. I’ve said it. No Bob Dole. No obfuscation. “Tell the truth Daniece.” My friend Lenore’s death bed command, her finger pointing at poor Daniece.
Tell the truth. I have cancer. A cancer. Not sure yet how much cancer yet, what stage, or what do we do next. I am on the the cancer treadmill. I thought I was a Pump person, but I guess there is room here for Lumps as well. An equal opportunity employer.
I had a CT scan this past week. Medical imaging. “A computed tomography (CT) scan is an imaging test that uses a computer to put a series of x-ray images together to create detailed 3D images of organs, tissues, bones and blood vessels in the body.”
All will be revealed in time. There is plenty of time. Until there isn’t. But today is a sunny day. So I will take that. I am surrounded by love. Friends and family are sending prayers. I feel that maybe the prayers should be going to someone who is more needing than me. After all, I could be getting ahead of myself. Dr. Google and all. All I really know is I have a very visible lump, which I call Lump, on my neck. Lump currently resides in my lymph node, slowly growing. The lymph node under my right submandibular jaw. Lump is a metastasizing carcinoma, i.e. cancer. Lump came from somewhere else. Which means Lump is only a sign on the highway, not the highway itself. Well, Life is a Highway. We got to ride it all night long.
Correction. We get to ride it all night long.
Get, not got.
Opportunity, not fate.
Use your words.
I hardly know what to say Dennis, of course I am hoping for the best outcome. Fwiw, odds of surviving this are better than they've ever been. Let me know if there's any way I can help out, whatever that may be...