Ebenscraw …[is] associated with irritation or frustration; … when a person has an irritated reaction that he or she has got something in his or her ebenscraw. This has since been shortened in modern vernacular to “craw”.
Okay, that is damn close.
I have a friend named Rachel. And once I was on the phone with her and her infant son was fussing. She said, “I wonder what is stuck in Eben’s craw?” Now if my son (or frankly, anyone) is being cranky, I’ll just kind of toss it out there.
As if it is a real word.
I’ll say something like, “Wow, that’s enough ebenscraw for one day, doncha think?”
It’s amazing how a good imaginary word can quiet people right down.
Gotta love those imaginary words. So kudos to Shawnadee.
So it is time to continue with the fun today.
Remember, the first person to use the word the way I do shall receive cyber-love. And by that, I mean I will announce your identity in the next Made-It-Up Monday post. If you are a blogger, I will link up to your blog, so folks can head over and check out your stuff.
If you are not a blogger, don’t worry. I will highlight your name in bold (like I did for Shawnadee) and let everyone know how smart you are. If you are looking for a new job, you can put “uncanny ability to define 100% bogus words” on your resumé and direct prospective employers here. I will totally back you up.
Continuing alphabetically, this week, the made up word is:
FONGUTTER
What the heck is that? When would you say it? Define it and give me a sentence in which you show me how you would use it.
During the course of the day I received a response.
No, it was not from him.
But it was from a former student, someone I have not seen with my own eyes for decades.
This person gave me permission to share.
So I am.
That's a lot of boxes!
When my parents moved from my hometown, I wasn’t able to go home to look through my room, so they threw everything I owned in bags and boxes (mostly just opening the drawers and dumping the stuff in). They said I could look through it later.
That was almost ten years ago.
When I went to visit a few months ago, they told me I should look through everything and either move it or lose it. I spent hours looking through all the papers from preschool through high school. I found drawings I had made, essays I had written, and report cards.
And in the mix, I also found a very sad poem I had written.
And a note from you.
Since I work with teenagers, I worry all the time I will miss the signs — and hope that they feel as comfortable coming to me as I did to you.
It is scary when someone you know commits suicide; it can feel like you missed something.
But I cannot be the only person you have taught to say you have also caught the signs.
As a teen it would not have been easy, or even in my realm of thought, to say thank you.
But it is now.
And so I wanted to write and say thank you for caring, thank you for seeing signs that things were not right and especially thank you for simply taking the time to listen.
I cannot tell you what I might would have done in high school because I really don’t know, but I do know that I am grateful to you for being there.
The campaign says: “It gets better”. Well it does, and I am so grateful to be here to prove that saying true.
Much gratitude to the person who authored this letter.
It meant the world to me.
So much of teaching is about delayed gratification.
We teachers spend our days with these people — some of whom we come to care about — and then we set them free, and cross our fingers that everyone will land on his or her feet.
Like the mythical Scorpion, people born under the sign of Scorpio are strong-willed.
Every Scorpio I know is a powerhouse. We don’t like to be controlled by others.
Astrologists say that Scorpios tend to function as agents of purging, not only on a personal level but on the collective level as well.
It is safe to say that if I don’t feel something is right, I won’t shut up about it.
I will challenge you about it.
I will call you out and wrestle you to the mat.
This relentlessness can be a good thing, but I have also been blamed for my need to bring uncomfortable issues to the surface. I don’t get involved to cause trouble. I get involved in an effort to find solutions and heal.
But Scorpios aren’t always the most tactful.
Like the scorpion that kills itself rather than letting someone else kill it, Scorpios are determined, and once we’ve made up our minds we are unlikely to change them.
We can be self-destructive.
You know how Mick Jagger sang: “You can’t always get what you want”?
That’s because he isn’t a Scorpio.
Scorpios always get what they want.
I have to admit, I tend to be am stubborn.
Once, I worked on a Committee.
Here is what I learned.
I cannot work on a Committee.
Committees are too slow for me.
People on committees have to talk about things for eleventeen hundred bajillion years and I just cannot stand that. In addition, I refuse to give up when others have long since gotten bored, decided to move on, or abandoned a project.
I can’t do that.
When I am invested in something, I give it all of me. I don’t care about the money or the lack of it. I just need to see the project through. I have tried to not be a completion-oriented renegade.
I can’t help it; it is written in the stars.
Or something.
Scorpios draw people to them.
How much do I want this coat?
That’s because we are intelligent hot.
Because everyone knows Scorpios are considered the most passionate symbol in the astrological chart.
Astrologists say Scorpios enjoy competition and challenge. That we aren’t satisfied with moving along at half-speed or lowering our abilities to allow people with lesser skills to beat us.
I move at full court press hummingbird. I am fast-talking and fast walking. You’d better get those synapses firing if you want to be with me.
I have six games of Words With Friends going on concurrently. And let’s be clear. When we play? We are not friends.
I am trying to destroy you.
As friends and lovers, Scorpios are loyal and devoted. Touch my people, and I will find the closet sharp instrument and spear you.
Because Scorpios can hurt people.
What can I say? I’m a Scorpio; sometimes I sting.
Ironically, while Scorpios can wound, we are also about healing: ourselves and the world.
In nature, if a scorpion loses its tail, it can heal itself by growing a new one. Cool right? Well, Scorpios are about regeneration, too.
Harry Potter fans, you remember the Phoenix, right? Remember how it regenerated itself from the ashes of its death and rose into the sky, reborn. The most highly evolved Scorpios aspire to be the Phoenix, to rise above the ordinary world and into something extraordinary.
While out for Chinese food last night. This is the fortune that was placed in front of my plate:
Scorpios have big dreams, and they tend to get things done.
So my Scorpio-ishness will make sure that one day I will have a published book.
It was nice of Clay to include a crumpled up bag of Starbucks coffee. It made the box smell really good.
Then I read Clay’s note which explained that if I return the empty bag, the folks at Starbucks will give me a free coffee.
He also included this:
Because I'm worth it!
Thank you, Clay! 😉
Unfortunately, the coffee would have to wait.
Because I couldn’t leave the house.
At 2 pm, the repair guys still hadn’t come.
And I had a terrible realization:
Whaaat?
So I was in my jammies at 2 o’clock in the afternoon?
It was my day off!
Don’t judge me!
One tweep invoked Murphy’s Law:
I stuck this on the front door — just in case:
Time dragged like the time my brother dragged me by my hair.
And then it all happened so fast.
I so wanted to get a picture of Patrick, my freezer repair guy.
But I never even had a chance to ask for it.
Or explain why I wanted it.
Or get his permission to post it.
He was in and out of that freezer so fast you’d have thought I hadn’t showered or something.
Which I did, thank you very much.
Anyway, he’ll be back next Thursday.
Meanwhile, tomorrow the student who gave me the tip on how to bet in that hockey contest will be getting a little somethin’-somethin’ from me.
Whaaaat?
I mean chocolate from Pittsburgh.
Sheesh! Y’all can take something innocent and delicate and gentle — like hockey — and twist it like the towel Patrick used to dry out my dripping freezer, and turn it into something nasty.
And, by the way, that towel is nasty now.
What is the last appliance you had to service? And how many times did it take for the repair-person to come back until it was really fixed? And what do you think about extended warranties?
I recently had a nostalgic moment. The tree reminded me of something I hadn't thought about in a long time.
I remember you mornings mostly, emerging from showers: towel-clad, shoulders bare and water-speckled.
Wrapped in the orange glow from overhead heating lamps, enveloped by thick bathroom mist, you shined, luminescent. Poreless, your skin, bronze and pure, and I noticed you (as if for the first time) golden curls, heavy and weighted with water, still catching light and reflecting syrupy-sweetness.
So solid, you stood like some kind of crazy tree, and like the long-armed, wobbly-kneed tomboy I used to be, I wanted to climb your branches.
Wanted to become part of your limbs’ history.
Wanted to climb your sweet boughs, surrounded by soft reds and browns and gold, press my nose to hair which I remember smelled like autumn, musky and damp.
Everything about you reminds me of Fall, a time that, as a child, I called “tree-turn season,” a time that reminds me of a drum beat, or a heart beat, or some kind of gentle pounding, like a child’s fist on a brass knocker at Halloween.
(Was this why I loved you?)
There were more reasons, I’m sure, but in that moment, time spilled through air, an emptiness filled, and I scooped up fallen bits of my reality, throwing them invisibly overhead like the crinkly leaves of my childhood, as golden drops of water slipped down your back and you moved behind our bedroom door.
I didn’t recognize it then, but I should have known that winter was coming.
After apple-picking and pumpkin-carving and Halloweening, what do you remember about autumn?
This week writers were asked to use the weather, or a photo of an autumn day to inspire a memoir piece in under 300 words.For more wonderful pieces, click on the button above.
Image by slurv via Flickr -- NOTE: This is not a picture of my tattoo. This is gorgeous!
It was out of character for me, but I showed up without a plan.
Just a little scribble on a scrap of paper.
I asked a few million questions about the needles.
“Lady,” said the man at the counter, “we ain’t interested in spreadin’ diseases.”
Jed, the newest apprentice, was available.
I agreed. Jed would be fine.
What did I know?
I wanted a tattoo.
So I dropped my pants and allowed a stranger to drag needles across my skin.
As I laid on the table, I listened to the rain that pummeled the tin roof over our heads.
And through the open door, I watched the rain sweep cigarette butts into the sewer.
Any other day, I would have been sitting cross-legged on the futon in my apartment grading student papers. Lying there, I was grateful I didn’t have a dog that needed to be let out at any particular time. I remembered how – before I was a teacher, a role model — I liked a little spontaneity.
Eventually, Jed finished.
I couldn’t wait to see it.
I had shown Jed that initial sketch, but he had taken some liberties.
And he left me with a permanent lopsided heart.
I paid seventy-five dollars in cash for my little act of rebellion.
Initially, I was annoyed by its wrongness.
But I quickly grew to love it.
And twenty years later, each time I look at my tattoo (that has become even more crooked over time), I remember a lazy day in New Orleans. An in-between time, when I was neither wife nor mother but dangerously free.
My tattoo reminds me of a place I love fiercely. It reminds me how love without patience and care can become unbalanced. Most of all, my tattoo reminds this Type A control-freak that when a person acts impulsively, sometimes the results can be pleasantly imperfect.
What do you think about tattoos? Art or self-mutilation?
• • •
I so rarely have time to do the fabulous prompts from Red Writing Hood, but this week, it spoke to me. The assignment: Write a piece in which a tattoo figures prominently in 300 words.
After my post went up at I Survived The Mean Girls, I learned that Anderson Cooper had run a television special devoted to bullying awareness and prevention called Bullying: It Stops Here.
The special aired from Rutgers University about one year after freshman Tyler Clementi’s suicide. Clementi killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge after a recording of him having a sexual encounter with another man was posted online.
Cooper has been a strong opponent of bullying. He has spent a lot of time on his show and on other programs speaking out about the suicides among young men and women that were done in response to years of being bullied.
If you can, watch all four parts of Cooper’s video clips below.
Watch with your kids.
Cooper asks students to take a pledge to speak out against bullying.
Because studies show that if even one person speaks up and points out the behavior, bullies are likely to stop doing what they are doing.
All it takes is one person to say, “Whoa, what are you doing?!” or “Hey, that’s really mean!”
As usual, it is silence that is deadly.
And cyber-bullying is a disaster.
Because once words and images go viral, there is no escape for the target.
Only torment and embarrassment and shame.
It’s time to stop using our technology to hurt.
How do we teach our children to stand up against the bullies? How do we get them to risk everything to protect someone else? How do we get them to make better choices? How do we move toward civility and tolerance?
If you have a child who has been bullied, or a child who is complaining about feeling like a bystander (which is how many of us feel during our middle and high school years), please check out I Survived The Mean Girls, which offers a supportive community for people who have been bullied or who have witnessed bullying.
When I was a little girl, a Sunday School teacher told me that on Rosh Hashanah, G-d opened a big book that had everyone’s names in it, young and old.
My teacher explained how, each year, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, G-d decided who would live and who would die in the upcoming year. And how. By fire or by water; by plague or by earthquake. The list went on forever.
I remember imagining a really old, wrinkled guy in white robes sitting at a silver desk perched on top of clouds. In his smooth, shaky hand, he held a gold pen that he used to cross-out people’s names.
On The High Holy Days, I dressed in the fancy clothes that my mother had laid out for me and sat in temple all day with my family.
And as the adults chanted words in English and Hebrew, I played nervously with the knots on my father’s prayer shawl.
And I looked around and wondered who was not going to be there the next year.
Because it was a pretty scary idea: that G-d was making decisions all the time based on how we behaved.
(‘Cuz I wasn’t always the best little girl.)
But there was a lot more to that prayer: a part that I didn’t figure out until years later.
The prayer reads:
But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity avert the severe Decree! This is Your glory: You are slow to anger, ready to forgive. G-d, it is not the death of sinners You seek, but that they should turn from their ways and live.
Until the last day You wait for them, welcoming them as soon as they turn to You (314).
Those words are a gift.
An exhale.
They mean that if we really have open hearts and want to do right for all the messed up shizz we have done throughout the year, through prayer and acts of love and kindness, we can change a course previously set in motion.
Jews have ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to try to set things right.
And G-d is reasonable.
Like a good parent.
For example, when your kid messes up and you calmly explain: “Listen, I asked you to clean your room, but you ignored me. If you clean your room, take out the garbage, wash the dishes, and walk the dog, you can have your iPod back tomorrow.”
G-d is cool like that. G-d does not say:
You were bad so I’m putting you out of your house, buddy. Nothing you can do about it now, sucker!
Not at all.
G-d wants us to recognize and admit that we have goofed up during the year.
And we can fix these things.
We can apologize.
To have that chance, to be able to fix what has been broken, is something I take pretty seriously.
It is a scene that shows a little of what Yom Kippur is about.
For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the film, Yussel Rabinovitch, the son of an Orthodox cantor, decides to leave his religious tradition and follow his heart.
He leaves his synagogue and the expectations of his family to continue as a cantor. (Whaaat?)
He leaves his childhood sweetheart, Rivka. (Unheard of.)
He drives across country because he wants to sing popular music. Non-religious music. (He’s meshuganah.)
He changes his name, loses his Jewish identity, and becomes Jess Robin.
He meets another woman. (Oy.)
She’s not Jewish. (Double oy.)
They fall in love.
At some point, Jess is in New York and he runs into one of his father’s old friends who tells him that his father has been ill.
The doctors won’t let Cantor Rabinovitch sing on Yom Kippur due to his high blood pressure.
We learn that a Rabinovitch has always sung on Kol Nidre for — like — 912 generations. (Or at least 3.)
But Jess Robin humbly returns to his roots and becomes Yussel Rabinovitch for Yom Kippur.
Even though his father has declared him dead.
Even though he has been excommunicated.
He goes back to apologize the only way he can.
In song.
(Note: I start crying at 1:24.)
This is what we are supposed to do.
(No, not the singing thing!)
We are supposed to humble ourselves — to those we have hurt, to G-d — in that kind of honest way.
The High Holy Days give Jews a chance to reflect on the wrongs we’ve committed to those around us, to make amends for those wrongs, and face the new year with gratitude, and hope that we’ve been given a chance to start anew.
Bottom line: We have all sinned.
We are human.
This year, the fasting is over.
The table has been cleared.
What’s done is done.
The Book is closed.
I’ve done what I can.
I guess this is where the faith part comes in.
Now the trick is to be a better me in 5772.
Now listen to Babs sing and tell me what you feel when you hear her voice.
Stern, Chaim. Ed. Gates of Repentance: The New Union Prayerbook for the Days of Awe. 2. New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1985. 313-4. Print.
I was prescribed Klonopin for insomnia in 2005. Seven years later, after a slow, medically supervised wean, I became cognitively impaired, and after 30 months of intense suffering, I have been resurrected - a phoenix, come from the ashes, ready to battle doctors and big Pharma, while offering empathic support to those still suffering protracted withdrawal symptoms.
A perfectionist by nature, I'm learning to find beauty in the chaos. I'm the girl with the big ideas and the big hair. And words. Always words.
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