the Village Knittiot

I have been wanting to do a 100 things about me for some time, but have been waiting for the right inspiration to give me a proverbial kick in the pants — or, if you prefer a Wile E. Coyote metaphor, an Acme anvil to the head. As I mentioned, I am reading Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life at the moment and am enjoying it immensely. So, I decided to do an encyclopedic version of the standard 100 Things About me post. And since, as you know, I am a bit, shall we say, verbose, I will spare you an insanely long post and give it to you one letter at a time.

A

absentee father: I always thought this was such an odd description. It makes it seem nicer somehow, like there is an excuse. I am absent from school because I am sick. Or like you can still do something in your absence — like with an absentee ballot. It’s as if the father is absent for some completely understandable reason. And while I understand that there were indeed reasons that my father left, I think “abandoned” is a much more appropriate word as it portrays the kind of cowardice inherent in having a child and then choosing to have nothing to do with it.

alice: I love this name. In my head, it sounds simultaneously simple, mysterious and insightful. When I finally realized that I had fallen in love with Mr. Knittiot (The second time around there was no halo and glorious light, embarrassingly enough I had to have it pointed out to me by my best friend — what did I know, I’d never fallen in love before. I was happily headed for spinsterhood.) I had this sudden image of us years and years from then with a child — our child, in point of fact — reading to her from her very own copy of Alice in Wonderland. Never mind that Mr. K owns several dozen different version of the book, this was hers. And in this vision, which was only flashes of a second, I knew it was hers because he had purchased her a wonderful old used copy for her birthday. Also, friends of ours have a tiny, petite and serious cat named Alice who hides from me whenever I am at her house. It is also the name of my Grandma Alice who is not really my grandma, but is one of the people throughout my life who has been kind enough to let me adopt her as one. Grandma Alice bakes homemade bread, chicken soup from scratch and the best darn rhubarb strawberry pie (more rhubarb than strawberries for extra tartness) you will ever taste. She used to bake me a pie whenever I asked for one, or sometimes just because she was thinking of me, and I would eat it for every meal until it was gone. It usually only lasted a couple of days.

apple: I like to eat apples in the fall — especially ones that I have picked myself. I don’t know why, but they taste better if you pick them yourself. My favorite are the crisp, tart kind that make your cheek muscles ache a little bit as your whole face sort of goes into an involuntary pucker. I don’t like sweet apples or ones that are mushy. I hated apples when I was a kid. I think because all the apples I ever had as a kid were those disgusting, flavorless, mealy Washington apples that come in big bags and were always served with school hot lunches. They had a slightly chemical taste to them and not much else.

auntie: I have always called my aunt (pronounced awnt) “auntie Robin.” I can call her Robin, and I can call her my aunt occassionally, but I cannot call her aunt Robin, because she is my auntie Robin. Also, I don’t know if awnt vs. aaant is a regional thing, but I can’t say aaaant. It has always been awnt.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 9th, 2005 at 5:35 am and is filed under this Random Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.