Nilla Folders

It wasn’t until very recently that I realized that manila folders probably weren’t named based on someone’s mispronunciation of the word vanilla. A quick search on wikipedia confirmed my new suspicions, and I realized I’m an idiot. Oddly, the connection between ‘Nilla Wafers and vanilla was also a relatively recent one on my part. Murphy’s law of word association is not one that I care to break often. Most of the time when think two words are related, they aren’t. When I assume they have nothing to do with one another, they share a common root.

Another common root that I enjoy is the potato. I think I was in the fifth grade, and we were having some sort of spelling test, and I was one of the only kids who spelled it right. I’m sure that my faux-Irish American upbringing is to blame, and it isn’t my obviously superior intelligence. Which reminds me, to my eternal shame, in my rush to finish a paper for my English class last quarter, I used the word imbibe instead of eat. As in, they had to imbibe the flesh of the dead lemming. Every single time I think of this, I burn with shame. Literally. The shame feels much the way Mrs. White described her anger in the movie Clue; “I can feel-- flames. Flames, on the side of my face. Heaving, deep, heaving--” which is a fantastic movie, anyway. I wasn’t sure that you could feel a deep burning shame until recently, and this either says something very good about me, or very bad. That is, I could either never have done anything shameful or embarrassing in the past, or perhaps I just never noticed the shame that I should have felt. Or perhaps I’m deluding myself, and I merely do not hold on to the memory of all of the many shames of the past.

I’m sure it’s the latter. Not the ladder, as I may have written once or twice in younger, more innocent times. (Now that I have gotten away from it, I do remember the time that I said “shat” in front of my mother without knowing what it meant. Shame-- I felt it then. So clearly I’m a liar).

I have two new loves, as of late. One is the word lush. The way it forces the mouth to wrap around the gentle swishy sigh of the u, and the drawn out ending of the word, as though the word doesn’t care if you have places to go, people to see, or booze to drink. I have yet to be able to clip the end of the word off neatly, and I‘ve never heard anyone else do it either. I want to be lush. Not in the drunkard sense of the word, but in the lavish, opulent, savory way. In the delicately beautiful, the densely luxurious way. Additionally, lush’s lovechild lushly might just be the most juicy-fun word I have ever had the pleasure of speaking. It may be awkward in a sentence, it may not play well with others, but as far as the sound of it as an individual goes, I can’t beat it.

I also am completely, totally madly in love with the song “Bubble Toes” by Jack Johnson.

When you move like a jellyfish
Rhythm don't mean nothing
You go with the flow
You don't stop

Truer words were probably never spoken.