Now Proudly a Word Whore

Really. I mean that in the nicest of ways. It's like when I call Girl Dog "a whore for petting" I really mean she's sweet and she can't get enough petting. Apparently, I'm a whore for words. I can't get enough of them. I do not think I'm alone in my word whorery, either. Why else would they just keep adding words to the dictionary? Oh, sure, they say it's because people make up new words (like whorery, for instance), but we all know that those dictionary people just love words and gobble them up like the taxman do a paycheck.

You can all blame Mama Buzzardbilly when you have to look up some word that I grew up thinking everyone used. She has always been a voracious reader, so she always had a hellacious vocabulary. At nearly 74 (in just a week), she still reads a novel a day most days. She also watches TV and does other things. Grasshopper is the same way. Me, not so much. If I had to read a novel in one day, it would either need to be mighty slim or I would have to ignore everything but reading.

When they were both into reading romances when I was growing up, I read the entire set of our World Book Encyclopedia because (other than the paper, which I read every day) it was the only non-fiction in the house (oh, and we had my sister's copy of Very Special People which brought endless hours of fascination to both of us and two Time-Life books on serial killers). Now that I think about it, that's one fucked-up childhood reading list right there. That and scary comics like Tales from the Crypt.

And, with that, my friends, I believe I can save my psychiatrist from having to dig further for the root of "Why do Buzzardbilly be so weird?" My new rallying cry should be: "I'm weird; I ain't skeered; get used to it." (Really, I might have to make a blog award to give out that carries the cry for other weird unskeered folks to show and share their pride.)

But, the encyclopedia was what I was reading when a cousin stayed at the house one time when I was on a larger volume (like "M"), and he just looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Damn, girl, whatchu been eating?" In classic booksmart fashion, I didn't get what he meant until later. It was just so normal to me to grab a volume when I was bored, that I didn't realize he was marveling at the size of the book I was taking to poo town and figured I was brewing a two-flusher.

Did I mention there were less than 50 people in my home town and most of them were my relatives? Bored came often to me. And, I can't say I understood everything I read, but I did learn that the letter "t" is the scariest volume in the encyclopedia, what with its trichinosis (that's what you get if you eat undercooked pork and the trichina larvae set up house in your innards), tapeworm, tsetse fly, taxes, termites and so on.

Once I discovered rock magazines, I only resorted to the encyclopedia when I was out of new mags to read. When I ran out of encyclopedia volumes, I read an unabridged dictionary that Mom had gotten when she was in high school. It was this huge ornate leather bound thing that looked like it should hold all the spells known to man in it from the appearance of the binding alone.

I used to hide my word whorery whenever I could. I found that people had funny reactions to me using words they didn't know...like they'd get mad and not want to say why before they'd finally spit out that they didn't know what the fuck I was talking about and why couldn't I just speak English like everyone else. That's right: Friends and family, keeping people stupid since at least 1964.

But, that didn't really stop me from learning words. I saw no use to find them scary. And, I found that people who get pissed at hearing words they don't understand also get scared and leave you and your freaky vocabulary alone if you get mad at them and say something that might as well be in another language to them. That's right: Big words, bringing peace to those who can sling them since at least 1964.

And, yet, with all this word hoarding and word whoring, probably my favorite word I've ever heard came from my ex-brother-in-law Creme Horn (whom I will never let the world forget left a perfectly good home by allowing himself to be lured away by a vision of vixenry that came in the form a married female meth-head lumberjack with an aversion to showers or any other form of hygiene as well as no intention of divorcing her husband...they had one of those marriages where you take breaks...yeah, I'm still carrying a little grudge there, huh). He said, "I come from the fucked-uppededest family ever."

I can't say with any sense of sureness that his family was indeed the fucked-uppededest family ever (though God knows they've strived for that title), but fucked-uppededest totally rocks. I guess that makes me a word whore who doesn't mind walking the cheap streets from time to time.

I can't really say what my second favorite word ever (pissflaps--which never fails to deliver a facial reaction that is priceless) makes me. I fear that knowledge.

Favorite words?

Words that skeeze you out?

Wanna tell about that time some smartass dweeb whipped out the big words on you and you left him hanging on a coat hook by the elastic in his underwear?

Wanna share a story about having some lunkhead leave you hanging by your underwear on a coat hook?

It's so much harder on male word whores. They get physically picked on. Girls just get called bitches and stay home on Saturday night quite a bit.