When my husband and I were first married, we taught and lived in a boarding school in Massachusetts. We had twenty eighth grade boys (shudder) in our care in the dorm, which as you can imagine held various perils. Someone really had to be with them at all times. Even then, a kid managed to break his arm horsing around.

One winter, the fire alarms malfunctioned and went off accidentally at 2 AM for several nights in a row. There’s nothing like shepherding adolescent boys down four flights of fire escape stairs in a diaphanous nightgown. After the second time, I wised up and started sleeping in flannel pajamas.

I look back and marvel over the schedule we simply accepted—nay, were grateful for. We had jobs. Housing. Food. We ate three meals a day with the students, dishing out portions family-style in a dining room that had lots of wildlife trophies on the paneled walls. We had two nights and one afternoon a week off, and every other weekend. For all practical purposes this meant nothing positive for my husband’s leisure time; he coached sports for three seasons and had practice and games when he was supposed to be “free.” Somewhere on the baseball field, his original wedding ring has been lost for 52 springs. And we got paid just once a month, which made those dining hall meals pretty appealing on week four even as the dead animals looked on.

One of the teachers who covered for us evenings used to come equipped with a big, fat dictionary. His stated goal was to improve his knowledge, not to bash the boys on the head no matter how much they might deserve it. He’d sit in the lounge reading it, pretty much oblivious to any shenanigans, and that was how that arm got broken before lights out.

I had never known anyone to read the dictionary as if it was a novel, nor have I met anyone since. But I’m all for being a life-long learner. I am forever grateful to my sophomore high school English teacher, Matthew Murphy. He was the first one to call me Maggie, and made us look up the root words of a lengthy list of vocabulary words each week. I never took a Latin class, yet I am somewhat conversant (or used to be) with the language. And I can usually figure out meanings from context. If not, the Internet makes finding definitions easy-peasy.

One of the few fun things about X AKA Twitter is the daily posting of four very strange words by @arealmofwonder. Most will never be used in normal conversation, and unlikely to be found in the dictionary or any book you read or write. But I will leave you with some recent spring-ish words, as I take a brief break from blogging with the Maine Crime Writers. May you be filled with vernalagnia (the romantic mood brought on by good spring weather) and your gardens soon flosculous (covered in flowers). No doubt there will be some dabbledy (rainy weather) ahead, but it sure beats snow. See you in September!

Words to live by:

“Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.” ~Mark Twain

“Never use a long word when a short one will do.” ~George Orwell

Some super-simple and effective words:

April in Maine by May Sarton

The days are cold and brown,

Brown fields, no sign of green,

Brown twigs, not even swelling,

And dirty snow in the woods.

But as the dark flows in

The tree frogs begin

Their shrill sweet singing,

And we lie on our beds

Through the ecstatic night,

Wide awake, cracked open.

There will be no going back.

I had a book review once where the reader complained she had to look some words up. Mr. Murphy must be happy in heaven, though Mark and George and May probably don’t approve.

What’s your favorite “big” or weird word?

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