Published: September 10, 2009 09:38 pm      

Everybody’s an idiot from time to time

Sometimes you just suspect you’re an idiot.

Then there are other times when you know you’re an idiot.

Both of my readers may remember the time I put the Thanksgiving turkey into the cupboard to roast. Clearly, that was one of the times when I knew I was an idiot. No doubt about that one.

But there are always those times when the issue is less clearcut. Often these have to do with words, and how you read them. Sometimes you look at them and they just don’t take, the first time, no matter how very familiar they might be.

One of my favorite examples of this momentary loss of good sense was Aunt Cora, a great- or perhaps even a great-great aunt of mine. She is mainly remembered by my generation of the family for the time when she looked up from working her daily crossword puzzle with a puzzled frown on her wrinkled face. “They must be crazy, “ she said unbelievingly. “I never heard of this word. How can they use it in a puzzle? I’m going to write in to them about it.”

“What word is that, Aunt Cora?” my mother asked.

Aunt Cora looked at her indignantly. “ ‘Cheek!’ “ she said. “ ‘Cheek!’ Whoever heard of a word like ‘cheek’?’ If they’re going to start inventing words for their puzzles, I may have to stop subscribing to this newspaper!”

Actually my mother had her own claim to fame in this department a few years later. Once, observing the dolphins, whales, and other sea life in a Florida preserve she stopped at a sign and said, “Sealion? Sealion? What in the world is a sealion?” Another familiar word that has been known to look totally unfamiliar (to me, at least) is “foot,” when you see it as”fut.”

Perhaps it runs in the family. My college freshman grandson came across the word Annapolis one day and was really stymied. “Anna Polis,” he mused, over and over again. “Anna Polis. Anna Polis. What kind of a name is that for a town?” And he’s a Navy fan, too!

Sometimes words are like your friendly neighborhood supermarket checkout person. You recognize her behind the cash register, but meet her unexpectedly out in company, and you know you’re seen her before, but you just can’t place her.

See, you’re an idiot too, sometimes.

Just the other day, I was sitting in the car in the (old) Rite Aid parking lot, waiting for my daughter to come out from the store, and a truck pulled into the space in front of me. Clearly stenciled over the windshield was the word CRAFTSMAN. I couldn’t believe my eyes. What kind of a word was CRAFTSMAN? So many consonants there; surely they had left out a letter, a vowel; that was it! They had left out an I. It should have been CRAFITSMAN! Shouldn’t it?

Well, you know the answer to that. Of course, they hadn’t left out a letter — CRAFTSMAN is a perfectly good word as it stands. But in my idiot mind at that time, I didn’t recognize it until shortly before my daughter came back. That was lucky — I didn’t have to consult her and confirm her suspicion that Alzheimer’s was really settling in..

I recently reviewed a book called “The Pattern in the Carpet” by English writer Margaret Drabble and in it she writes about playing with a teaset as a child. A teaset? Never heard of it, and I’m as old as she is. Was it a pillow, I wondered, or maybe something you tease cats with, or, more likely, something really obscurely British? It was only by the next page that I realized that she was referring to one of those toy tea-party sets of cups and saucers and teapot, like every little girl used to have back when I was growing up. In other words, a tea set. Well, why didn’t they say that in the first place?

Then there was that letter to Ask Amy or one of the other advice columnists a few months ago, signed by Ashamed. “That’s funny,” I thought. “Apparently he’s Middle Eastern (Ash-a-med), but his letter was all-American through and through. Apparently personal problems are universal or something.” How long, you ask, until I caught on? Oh, maybe less than a minute — I recover fast from being an idiot.

Early this summer I was in Baltimore for a class reunion and went to church on Sunday at a nearby Episcopalian church. Before the service I noticed the cloth on the altar. It had a beautifully embroidered cross, with a “l” to the left of the cross and “AM” to the right of it. Hmmmm, I thought. What happened at l AM? There was 3 PM, of course, the moment when Peter denied him, and Jesus was said to have died, but I can’t remember any other Christian milestone that is associated with l AM. Oh, it took, maybe a hymn verse or two to realize that it was not a “1 AM” — it was an “I AM.”

If you’re lucky, lots of these times no one around you will notice that you’re an idiot.

Maude McDaniel is a Cumberland freelance writer. Her column appears on alternate Sundays in the Times-News.