Every time I read a proverb that suggests guarding my mouth and tongue, I am reminded of my high school and university softball days. Since I was a catcher, I feared catching high velocity pitches or foul tips that could knock out my teeth or injure my jaw. The mouth guard offered protection, peace of mind, and a “retirement” from my softball days with my teeth and jaw intact. Now, as I remember those days, the mouth guard serves as a good object lesson…
I once heard a story about a couple, Marge and Ed, who attended an annual fair in Iowa. Good food, exciting exhibits, amusement rides, and even helicopter rides were offered at the fairground. Every year Ed was attracted to the fifty-dollar helicopter ride; however, Marge was not in favor of the expense. She always proclaimed, “After all, Ed, fifty dollars is fifty dollars.”
Finally, the time came when Ed was determined to take the helicopter ride. He was getting…
A wave of nostalgia washed over me recently when I stumbled upon a quaint little Father’s Day card that my Mom had given to my Dad in 1955. That year they celebrated as the proud parents of two boys. The card, delicate and slightly yellowed with age, tells a story of love about a young family, and the honor my Mom expressed to her husband and father of her sons.
It’s fascinating to think about the context in which this card was given. In…
The English language has a large and complex vocabulary, with estimates ranging from 1million to over 1.6 million words, depending on how words are counted. Most unabridged dictionaries, contain over 600,000 entries, including obsolete and historical words, whereas dictionaries focused on current usage may have significantly fewer entries. Either way, that’s still a lot of words with which we can do harm or good.
Supposedly of the 600,000 words at our disposal, 300,000 are technical words used by scientists and medical…
There once was a monk who took a vow of silence but was permitted to speak two words every ten years. When the first decade was up, the monk said, “Food bad”. Then ten years later, he said, “Bed hard.” And then at the end of the third decade he said, “I quit”. The abbot said to the monk, “I am not surprised you quit because all you ever did was complain!”
The title of my article is a palindrome, one of the more playful aspects of language. A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of characters that reads the same forward and backward, ignoring spaces, punctuation, and capitalization. From simple examples like “radar” and “level” to longer phrases such as “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!”, palindromes have an uncanny ability to captivate our imagination.
Right now, in May 2025, we are experiencing a series of…
Momisms, or classic mom sayings, have been a staple of parenting across generations. Some common examples include: “You’ll live,” “Don’t put that in your mouth, you don’t know where it’s been,” and “Don’t sit too close to the TV, you’ll go blind”. These phrases, often used with a mix of humor and concern, reflect the core of a mother’s love and guidance.
