My Relationship With Words

In this story, my relationship with words. I’m Joanne Greene.When I was 2 years old, they couldn’t shut me up. I babbled with unintelligible sounds until I landed a few words and, from then on, it was Chatty Cathy. Continuous communication. By the way, Chatty Cathy was a doll in the late 50s early 60s who spoke when you pulled her string, a doll my parents would not let me have, for obvious reasons. They didn’t need more words. To save their sanity, they sent me to preschool at age 2 which, in 1956, was damn near revolutionary. Words have always been my jam. Numbers were taken by my math majoring siblings and bookkeeping mother. I, on the other hand, was excited to discover that bookkeeping has three double letters in a row (two o’s, two k’s, two e’s.) And that’s where my fascination with bookkeeping ended. I passed notes to my friends to get through long afternoons at Hebrew School, sent letters all summer to anyone whose address I’d snagged, and kept diaries from the time I could hold a pen. Words have always served me. I could turn them inside out, make them rhyme, and express my deep inner thoughts even when alone in my room. I fancied myself a writer, which was why, in high school, when I was NOT accepted into theAdvanced Placement Creative Writing class, I thought my future was shattered.The hopefuls were gathered into a classroom, after school, and given 20 minutes to write an essay, a poem, or whatever else based on a one-word prompt: CRYSTAL. That’s it? I gulped. Crystal? And then I got to work.Somehow, the lined notebook paper on which I wrote has survived all these years. At the very top, under my name, is the date: March 26, 1969. At the risk of hopelessly embarrassing myself and in the hope of giving the rest of you a good laugh, here goes:My Crystal.My crystal: a multitude of purpose   A many-sided reflectionA king of schizophrenic hypocracy   (misspelled) of a cut up beingAn ice cube melts to droplets and, like my crystal, reveals transparency.I see the reverberating pierces of ambiguity (did I mean pierces or pieces?) and vision….through reality unto my dreams.  Me as a whole is many times duplicated, and I begin to interpret…a bit.But then I re-look…re-see…and reconsider. (re-look is not a thing)Ah, it isn’t solely me who is cut up…and reappearingly formulated  (also, incorrect)It is also my eyes.And since my tools of vision are reflected also, then I can’t see through to the end.My crystal is useless, for there is no meaning.You can see why I was rejected. Undaunted, I kept writing…and also correcting people who made glaring verbal grammatical errors. What’s worse, nails on a chalkboard, or having to grit your teeth when someone says “her and I went to the movies”?  EEEEEE There’s a difference between your sandwich and you’re like a sandwich. A lot is not one four letter word. Than and then are not one and the same. You get the point. My nieces and nephew called me a grammar nazi. Thankfully, I was able to make the point with my two sons that incorrect grammar can lead to (obviously incorrect) assumptions about your intelligence, your education, your knowledge base. Their grammar, I breathe a sigh of relief, is not a problem. The thing about words…as wonderful as they are for expressing our thoughts, creating beauty and meaning, addressing societal needs, helping people to cope and move through challenging times, is that they, words, can heal and they can hurt. I’ve learned, over the decades, that sometimes…every now and then…it’s best if I just listen and keep my words to myself.  Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at [email protected] or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at [email protected] or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!