Crumbs From the Corner: Adventures in Woolgathering

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Simple Words



Mater's weapon: simplicity.
While I attempt to mercilessly quote to her some loquacious lines from Macbeth- a tangled process that involves choosing, sorting and uttering, with no guarantee that I could find the same phrase next time- Mater has, of late, been relishing the single-word format.
She has been watching a commercial on the television; she is enamoured with a certain catchphrase, and blasts it on my ear fifteen times before I can manage to stutter out my own lines.
"Simples!" she chirps like a triumphant little bird.
I shiver at the fall of the word- there is no telling why the brief punchline troubles me so, and my only error was in expressing my loathing- but I proceed, anyhow, with my unsolicited recitation of Shakespeare:
"Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowings."
"Simples!"
"When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won."
"Simples!"
The lone word pelts me, fast and furious, exceedingly irritating, raising my hackles. It dilutes whole sentences, reduces literature to a useless torrent of letters that my mother drowns out with a single victorious breath.
At length, we compromise: I will close the door between Mater and Shakespeare, and she will never say it again.
Simple.

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