JOHNSTOWN —
Anyone else have this issue: The more I know, the more I want to learn.
As I am writing my heart month stories for this week’s packages, I occasionally come across a term or description unfamiliar to me. So I look it up. And then the definition or article has something else that sounds important, so I look that up.
It helps in the writing; eventually. But it set me behind a little more yesterday. Instead of transcribing all the pages of notes and getting two quick stories done, I only finished the transcription – with the addition of a few hundred words copied from the websites where I found the background.
It came to 6,368 words, more or less (my quick transcribing sometimes adds an extra space in the middle of a word, or runs two words together).
The looking-up issue may be hereditary. My mother says she can’t put the dictionary or encyclopedia down after looking up just one measly word or subject. Something more interesting always catches her eye on the way to the subject of her search.
Besides the compulsion to add to our collection of mental information, we also share the sometimes-harmful compulsion to give out that information. She was telling a story about an outdoor event she and my late father were attending with some of his outspoken know-it-all friends. There was an unusual bird people were talking about and she suggested it looked like a bobolink.
Now Mom is the birder in the family, and I wouldn’t doubt for a minute that she saw a bobolink, especially after I, naturally, looked it up. The Cornell University ornithology lab describes the bobolink:
“A distinctive bird of open grasslands, the bobolink is the only American bird that is black underneath and white on the back. This coloring makes the male stand out while he is performing his displays.”
But Dad’s buddy, an avid hunter, disputed her, saying “A bobolink is a darn quail!” repeating it again, in triumph.
She said she knew he was confusing it with “bobwhite,” a common species of quail, but she was able to let him have his moment.
When she first told me that story, I asked her, “Why do we do that? Why do we have to find out stuff like that and then why do we have to tell people?”
I don’t think anyone in the family has a good answer for that, but my question, “why do we do that?” has been repeated as a catch phrase when a family member catches another in the act.
I guess I can’t complain, though. If it’s a flaw in our characters (another family catch phrase) it has paid my bills for a lot of years.
I did get my lazy body out for my regular walk, albeit a split session. I got to choir practice about a half-hour early at Bethany United Methodist Church, with plans for the walk then. But I say “about a half-hour” because I picked up neither my cell phone nor my watch; and the 1993 Tercel doesn’t have a functioning clock.
Undaunted I strode briskly off through the streets of Geistown and Richland Township, whispering to myself, “one-thousand-one, one thousand two….” Keeping track of every “one thousand sixty” on my fingers for 23 cycles until I stepped through the door.
Five minutes late!
“Blast and drat,” I said, in my mothers cussing vernacular. “So much for my self-timer.”
I was relieved they were still talking about what new music to feature for Easter and lent. As the newbie in the back row, I did not have much to contribute on that subject – I just try to hit the notes in front of me.
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