ACRONYMS AND BAD WORDS

I got a three word email from Surfer Girl today in answer to my previous email--I'm temporarily calling her Surfer Girl until I find the perfect title and it may even change from time to time. She's from California and even though she has a new baby she could be a surfer girl if she wanted to. This girl is so bright that she could do anything. She is married to a Rocket Scientist who really is a rocket scientist. He laughingly said that while he was getting his PhD in physics he felt stupid every day for three years.

Anyway, before Surfer Girl's three word email was the acronym "COL" which I had no clue about. "Chuckling out loud," the email said. I loved it even though acronyms usually leave me cold. This one fit. COL It may be the one I will actually use.

Well, except for the one SBD which I had to use this week. If you don't know what it means picture what would happen after eating a bowl--a huge bowl--of kale and bean soup. (I will put the recipe on my cookbook site in a day or so, it is simple and yet good.) And then picture eating another huge bowl later because it was so good and then later, looking at my middle and thinking wow, what did I eat today that I've gained ten pounds. I better not eat anything else today. And so, instead I ate just one more bowl of kale and bean soup. Later, the "Silent But Deadly's" showed up and my middle returned to normal size. So, there you have it, if you like acronyms, this may be a useful one.

I remember the time I got an acronym from an email friend--that I have never met and now have lost track of. Anyway, she wrote ROTFLMAO. I had no idea what that was and I must have spent twenty minutes trying to figure it out. I finally sent her an email and asked. Then I was embarrassed.

Not as embarrassed as my sister, Pat would have been. She couldn't abide bad words. One day Uncle Bliss was teaching Sunday School and he asked Pat to read from the scriptures. She read from John 12:15 "...behold, thy King cometh, sitting on a donkey's colt."

Uncle Bliss stopped her, "That's not what it said, Pat."

"I can't say that word, Uncle Bliss," she said.

"It just means donkey," he said.

"I know that, and if you want me to read, that's what you are going to get. A donkey."

And that's what he got.

How I miss my sister, Pat, who didn't like the word "butt" or "bum" but insisted that that part of the anatomy was a "bottom." She wasn't a prude. She had more fun than any two normal people and if you were around her for more than a few minutes you were laughing. Anytime a bad word was said in this house someone would raise an eyebrow and simply say the words, "Aunt Pat." Then the bad-word-say-er would back pedal. (Here's a post I wrote about her earlier this year.)

Her boys played on the high school basketball team and Matt told me that one night one of the players said a bad word during play. "I could hear my mother's indrawn breath clear down on the other end of the court," he said. And then he laughed and so did I because I knew it was true. He loved her and was proud of her integrity and so was I.

I think she would be okay with the acronym SBD and she might even COL.