Diminishing Vocabulary

I enjoy writing. I don’t love it. I might have loved it once, years ago when I was rich in words. Today, when the times have robbed so many of us of so much, I find my vocabulary, like my fortune, has dwindled to a tiny fraction of what it once was. So many dollars and so many words have somehow gone missing. Wouldn’t it have been nice had I thought to put away a few dollars for a rainy day, or a few words for an interesting thought. Were it not for dictionaries and Google (incidently, according to my dictionary, it really should be “googol”), my writings would certainly be reduced to ramblings. Or has that ship already sailed?

I have always loved words. The lovely, liquid, often long, sometimes lugubrious language of poetry. The splashing, hissing, buzzing, hiccupping, knocking, and kerplunking of the comics. The articles about animals, including mammals, specifically camels, who are often found trammeling the desert. And the stories of young (or not so young) Casanovas who promise, “I’ll walk you down the aisle on a tropical isle if you just say yes.”

Unfortunately, each passing year marks the passing of a few hundred more words from my lexicon. More and more things become “things,” whose given name escapes me. Fortunately, I live in Hawaii, where most everything can be described as “da kine” (but that’s another story), so my limitations are perhaps less obvious to those outside my immediate family. Speaking of immediately family, compared to my mother-in-law (bless her heart, which is huge) I am still a verbal giant. She retains only a few hundred words, including a few carefully chosen mild expletives, which serve her very well. Never mind that she loves to drink Formosas, or that her daughter gave her a pedophile for her birthday, or that the same daughter’s autopsy came back negative, or that her dear departed husbands asses are buried in the back yard next to the syphilis bushes.

No longer a verbal giant (if ever I was) and more akin to a verbal midget (I’m sorry, verbal small person, but that’s also another story), it would be nice if I still had the vocabulary and skills I once possessed (or the wealth I once enjoyed, but that’s still another story). If my memory wasn’t failing me and I still possessed a wealth of words, I could surely be prolific. I could pen worthy articles and correspond with important people. I could verbalize my great thoughts and compose treatises about my original, innovative ideas. If only I were just still rich in words and still loved writing, and could remember any of my great thoughts or innovative ideas.