published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition of Feb. 6th, 2009:
Peladophobia is becoming a rampant problem with middle-aged men, and if you have been watching cable TV, you will know this well. School and community professionals should employ an early detection system to screen people for this social ill. In case you didn’t know it, peladophobia is the fear of bald people. In our society, it is not technically the fear of bald people, but the fear of going bald ourselves that truly plagues us. The only thing that might be remotely as frightening as going bald is the fear of being too hairy. I would have used the term “hirsute” for “hairy” here, but I am not allowed to.
My children – yes, my own flesh and blood, accuse me of embellishing, sorry, padding, this column with unnecessary vocabulary words when ordinary (pedestrian) ones will do. They do read this column, although it is sometimes under duress. I used to bribe them into reading, but I now find that threatening them is faster, easier, and cheaper (or “more expedient, effective, and economical” if I’m allowed to use my own words). Not only is it easier on the pocketbook, it is quite possibly better for their character development.
When bribes and threats fail to entice them to read, I have two other techniques in my arsenal to encourage them to read my writing.
Scene 1: “Mom, have you seen my physics book?” I survey the seventeen stacks of books that have come to live on every horizontal surface that used to be visible. Only the floor is sacrosanct, and therefore safe from our vertical library piles. (I am afraid I will be one of those people who is one day discovered with books, papers, and Christmas cards from the past 35 years piled knee-high when the authorities are sent in to investigate an unholy smell.)
Even the high chair has been standing sentry for the past two years, its cavern piled high with books, notebooks, and papers from the seat past the height of the little table area which once held small meals on a Cookie Monster melamine plate, waiting for its contents to be dropped below, or ground into the table, or otherwise rejected. Why do we use plates on high chairs at all? I know; you’re going to pull that hygiene argument out of your un-infested, hygienic hat, aren’t you? Well, the little high chair table surface needs no longer suffer these indignities. It has become home to the electric pencil sharpener. I check our bookcases that are stuffed double deep in several places.
“Oh, wow!” I announce triumphantly, pointing to Pile # 13A. This pile has been intelligently stacked, teetering over the edge like an experiment in center-of-gravity by some unknown genius in the house. (This is probably the same character that never reloads the toilet paper, waiting for the empty cardboard roll to spontaneously regenerate itself.)
This pile is an upside down pyramid, massive anatomy textbooks have been stacked atop the tiny, antique math books my husband had used in his school years and has brought back from India for our kids’ training (torture). These tiny tomes don’t mess around. There are no pictures, no colors, and no clever problems involving which country recycles more than others, or which community once served the largest cake that was ever baked. You know the magaziney-textbooks that get swapped out every few years? An entire page is loaded with full-color photographs of the cake, and two ample paragraphs about the community that got together to bake it. Following that is a recipe for their cake, and finally, at long last, there are a couple of token problems on finding the area and perimeter of that cake. Here, imagination must be set aside, and the cake is simplified into a two dimensional rectangle.
No, these books are the size of an adult hand, and were used by the student two years in a row. There are succinct paragraphs on how to do something, like find the least common multiple, three examples, and then, literally hundreds of problems. All of the problems have answers in the back. The author expected the student to know the times tables and squares up to 20, and know what all the primes are up to 100, at least. You would be crazy to use a calculator, because most everything cancels out – as long as you know your times tables.
“Your physics book is right there, of course! It’s just under this week’s column. What? You haven’t read it yet?” Bingo! I have finally snagged a reader. It doesn’t take much inducement to get some people to put off doing their physics homework.
Scene 2: I wait for an audience of a few young people. I walk about, giggling and chuckling to myself. (“This is weird,” they think. Mom is in a good mood, and she hasn’t barked out orders at anyone nor is she lecturing anyone.) Their first response is to run and check the fridge to see whether I might have possibly opened the bottle of mango rum that my sister gave me eighteen months ago. No, it is intact. They are safe. Mom is not intoxicated, but she is acting bizarre and demented, nonetheless. Perhaps it would have been more comforting if alcohol could have been blamed.
My next outburst of maniacal laughter piques their curiosity. “What is it, Mom?” They have finally taken the bait. “Oh, it’s nothing.” We play this game for a few seconds until I finally say, “Oh, I was just remembering what I wrote about you this week.” If that doesn’t send at least one scrambling to read, I threaten them each with some household chore, and that usually does the trick. Yes! I have suckered a couple of other readers.
After all this effort, what do I get from my closest, 24/7 associates? I get constructive criticism, of course. Some of it is valid. For example, I had written about an author who used her husband’s toothbrush to clean up the toothpaste globs he left in the sink. My physics-avoider pointed out that it sound like Toothpaste-Avenger and Laura Doyle, author of “The Surrendered Wife” that I had discussed in the preceding paragraph, were one and the same. In fact, they were not. So she was right, but one should be careful in letting sixteen-year-olds know they are right, because they hold that over your head all the time.
At other times, I get sharp inhalations of breath and accusations like, “Mom! Did you get Isabel’s permission to use her name in here?” Yes, of course, I had talked to sweet Isabel first. Perhaps because my children have routinely witnessed me doing stupid or embarrassing things, they have difficulty believing that I can manage as an adult without their advice.
Sometimes the writing elicits groans, “Ew! Mom, did you have to say that about the sapling supports not being the only things sagging around here? Some of my friends read this, you know.” Good. First, it helps to know there are other readers. Secondly, I now have ammunition with which to threaten them the next time they’re getting too uppity.
But the most disgusting feedback I get is, “Mom, why do you have to use stupid vocabulary words in there all the time?” Okay, to be fair, this comes from the one that is home-schooled. He keeps a vocabulary notebook in which he enters and defines every unknown word he encounters. Sometimes, it’s a little embarrassing, like when he ran into what he thought was “afro-ha-desic.” Don’t get scared about what we’re learning. We started with an article on Rhodesia, which led to reading about Zimbabwe, followed by wildlife in Africa that are sometimes slaughtered for their parts which are believed to have aphrodisiacal qualities. This requires learning about Aphrodite, as well as how to pronounce the original word. Do you think there is a problem with this sort of stream-of-consciousness learning?
So, you have a problem with the vocabulary, and with stream-of-consciousness? Well, that really puts me into a rebellious mood. I learned a new word this week: prelapsarian. It has to do with the state of things before the fall of mankind. I learned that word, and now, I’m not even going to work it into this column.
Fear of hair, in case you were wondering, is chaetophobia, or hypertrichophobia, or trichopathophobia, or trichophobia. How’s that for vocabulary? Spell check is choking on these. I wonder what home-school boy is going to think when this one prints. Provided, that is, that I can get him to read it.
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