Knowledge and Gnats

This morning I began stockpiling hay for the horses. They eat about a bale a day between the three of them. I travel to Dallas next week for 7 days, and then off to Jekyll Island for 10 days, so I needed hay reserves for the house sitter.

I managed to get 26 bales on my pickup and actually had room for more. I think my record is 36 bales, but I had that load tied down.

I ran into the guy that I buy hay from and asked him what he was trying to trap in his barn. There was a little cage trap over in the corner with a small can of food in it for bait.

“I’m not sure; whatever is eating the cat’s food. I caught a possum yesterday and put a fresh can of salmon in the cage this morning for bait.”

In the south, we pronounce very clearly the “L” in salmon. I had forgotten about that since I personally had purged this pronunciation from my language years ago. It sounded nice to hear the “L” again.

There are lots of word sounds I have modified for the sake of the business world. It’s kind of sad. I guess I can cultivate my southern drawl one I am retired. You should hear the way I used to say words like crayon, yellow, tobacco, acorn, pecan, and the list goes on.

So I am mindlessly unloading the truck when I got to thinking about how the word gnat is spelled. Putting a “G” in front of the word has always bothered me. What were they thinking? Someone did this. It didn’t just happen naturally.

I’ll bet in the middle ages when they were coming up with the first dictionary that the guy in charge of G’s came up with this as a joke for all the ages.

“I thinkist I shall stealith an N word and makeith it my joketh for all the ages. How doth the council fancy a G in front of nat?”

The whole room bursts into laughter.

“Let the word nat forever more be spelled gnat!”

By now I was finished unloading the truck.

1 comments:

Peach Pod said...

I know what you mean. I used to say 'bank' as a 3 syllable word!