kiwords

I went to a high school where highest crime you could be accused of was intelligence. You could call someone a “half-witted, syphilitic son of a gutter whore” and only get a blank look. But say to someone, “You THINK YOU’RE SO SMART,” and, well, better hope you could run fast or fight hard.

I was forever being accused of thinking I was smart, an unjust accusation if ever there was one. I mean, I was a cheerleader. I read “Seventeen” and “Young Miss” magazines. I donated several billion brain cells to the fumes involved in changing my fingernail polish Every. Single. Night.

Did I think I was so smart?

Um. No.

But I had a serious word addiction. I read as many of them as I could, casually stealing books from the library (we weren’t ALLOWED to check out books except under very special, rare circumstances. I considered it an act of liberation). I used all kinds of big words, pretty, shiny, sparkly long words, and that was enough to brand me.

Also, I argued too much. For example, I took exception the number two insult in the school, “You ALWAYS think you’re right.”

“Well, DUH,” I would rejoin, “if I thought I was WRONG, I would change my opinion. To the one I thought was RIGHT. I might be MISTAKEN, but I don’t go around harboring beliefs I know are wrong.”

“You THINK YOU’RE SO SMART.”

*sigh*

I did NOT think I was so smart.

I just loved the words.

My senior year, I took the ACT test. In the middle of the test, in the vocabulary section (makes my mouth water, just a little, even now), I came across a word I’d never encountered before. I read it, reread it, blinked and read it again. I had NO IDEA what that word meant.

“Obstreperous.”

I had to know.

I WANTED that word.

There are rules, you know, governing the ACT. One of them is that You May Not write down any information contained in the test and remove it from the testing room. You May Not.

I stared at my mystery word for a moment, then took my eraser, turned it on its side, and lightly stroked the word in pencil onto its soft surface. I looked at its fuzzy letters, and dropped the eraser, safe in my jacket pocket. My heart thundered in my chest at my rebellious act.

When I got home, I pulled out my eraser, and looked the word up in the dictionary.

“Obstreperous. Adj. 1 - Noisily and stubbornly defiant. 2 - Aggressively boisterous.”

I love that word. It’s my own now, although if I were writing the dictionary, my entry for obstreperous would include definition #3 – “my precious middle son, Max.”

I was striding through the Tattered Cover bookstore this afternoon, earnestly explaining something to my mom. I believe it may have been why the shuffling of the books in the Narnia series is a wrong, misguided wrongness that should be repented of. I’m not sure. Whatever it was, I was EARNEST and SINCERE and WORDY in my defense of my point (a point Mom wasn’t arguing with, but still). Max trotted along between us, then looked up at me and said pointedly,

“Mama? Do you always think you’re right?”

Mom and I laughed so hard we had pause for a moment for breath. I grinned down at my boy and said,

“No, son, I don’t. But you know what? I am SO SMART.”