I was talking to the master of the house this morning and he looked at me at one point and said I was the only person he knew who used words like vouchsafe. He said it struck a weird note. “Why do you do it?” he asked. I answered, “I picked it up reading as a child, I use it sort of in a teasing way.” I like to color my observations sometimes with arcane use. Odd words have become such an automatic part of my vocabulary that I don’t think about them anymore.

So Ed is adding that to his list of squirrely things I do. Jay, my late husband was a word person. Our conversations were full of such byplay. Sometimes I would add a visual – some bit of business born in medieval times, a finger to the side of one’s nose as one intones some bit of sage wit. Once I was Igor to his Dracula. Or in an exaggeration of humility over some error, I would flush myself down the waste basket, lamenting, “Goodbye cruel world.”

Time goes on, things change.

Jay once said I was one of the few women he knew who indulged in whimsy. He also said that many people were afraid of whimsy, threatened by it somehow because they could not trace the logic of it.

During my early (oh so lowly) stint as a secretary at the Chicago Convention Bureau, I relieved at the switchboard. One day I dragged my gear out to the reception area so that I could work on stuff while answering the phones. I hooked up the Dictaphone (remember those?), sorted papers, Dorothy trotted off to lunch. I looked up and a fellow waiting for a convention rep was watching in wild surmise. He spoke, his voice choked with emotion, and told me he felt singularly honored to have witnessed this changing of the guard. I was captivated by his remark. I had met another whimsical soul. I never saw him again, to my utter dismay.

Another time I was at the board and rang the records room. Lynn answered. I pretended to be a particularly difficult person inquring about the meeting schedule of an obscure group. I gave her a really hard time. While she searched for the information, I got up (it was a slow day, hence my madness), turned the corner into the records room and spoke to Lynn. “Are you having some kind of a trouble, dear?” I inquired. Lynn, exasperated, said, “It’s this woman, I don’t know how to handle her.” She looked distraught. “I’ll fix her,” I said. I picked up the phone on her desk and yelled into it, telling the empty line to knock it off and leave Lynn alone. Then I started laughing hysterically. Lynn, thunderstruck, started backing away from me, “Harriet, Harriet …” she squeaked. I tell you I don’t get a chance to pull such nonsense anymore. I really miss stuff like that.

Sigh. Definitely out of sync in the corporate world.

xx, Teal