Childhood and Strange Mental Images

Adults have a way with words. Hearing these phrases for the first time startled me. Women who were my mother's contemporaries would describe applying makeup as "I have to put my face on."

That was scary. Did they not have a face and drew it in? This was the standard phrase used. I did think a makeup test meant we had to wear makeup. Don't ask what I thought an oral exam was.

No wonder I did not like school. When I found receptive people I talked a lot. This didn't happen often at home. I always seemed to live a double life. My family thought I was "Shy" because I did not perform for relatives and spoke indefinitely with receptive people.

After an especially good conversation, people who wanted me to make friends accused me of having "Diarrhea of the mouth." My conversations were nothing like ptomaine poisoning.

That was the unsexiest day of my life. I was so sick that I asked to go home and they let me. It felt like there would be no tomorrow. Regardless of how many trips to the lavatory I had, no weight was lost.

People use phrases without thinking what they mean. In my comic store days there was a run on back issues. Probably The Uncanny X-Men. It was nice selling a large amount for many reasons.

It brought money to a small business, there were some extras in the back room which clears out space in the surplus section opening it for the next week's comics.

That did not justify an otherwise forgotten employee to say the section was "Raped". Perhaps he meant it like "Raped and pillaged" which still sounds like what Hamas did on October 7. In our all male business; this was a poor choice of words.

Couldn't that section have been "Ravaged?" At the time there was a character named Ravage whom I recall for my boss saying "Watch out or he'll throw garbage at you."

Ravage 2099 was the weakest of the Marvel 2099 characters. How many articles shall I write by 2099? Four thousand every ten years- 28,000 from 2029-99, add the five and three-fourths years between now and then- that is the better part of thirty-five thousand articles.

Chances are I shall still describe when my sister was a baby at that point. It's a better topic than phrases that make me think for the wrong reasons. When I was accused of talking too much vulgarly, my sister occasionally soiled her diaper and outfit so she needed a change of clothes.

That's "What every baby does" and not specific enough to break my Lenten sacrifice of not writing about the babydom. People say strange things. I interpreted "Sea" as C. The Mediterranean C is different. Sealing wax was interpreted as ceiling wax.

The English language is interesting. Some use phrase that create strange mental images. Some are standard, others are disgusting. don't make the world any more vulgar than necessary.