Donovan Kelly
Crummy But Good Writer with a Lighter Touch
Forty years in rural northwestern Virginia and I still can't talk upcountry. Our children grew up here and can say "up side the head" with great conviction. I won't even try. I'm stuck with my native Pennsylvanian tongue. When all around me are craving "soda" I still ask for "pop." Some words just feel right, or at least are more fun to say.
Take a rare cell phone conversation that I enjoyed overhearing. She strode into the Leesburg hair salon while in the middle of a one-ear conversation that she didn't want. Sitting down in the chair next to me, she interrupted her caller,"Listen, this a very long and detailed description. And frankly, quite boring. I'm in the middle of an important outside-the-office meeting now and will have to go." Hanging up with a satisfied click, she sat back to have her hair cut, a very important outside-the-office meeting indeed.
Was the conversation a mere cell phone power play designed to impress me? No. I have known this fortyish professional since she was the little girl living next door on our rural edge of the Blue Ridge. Always she has been a good talker with a sharp turn of tongue. Perhaps she has given up some country ways and urbanized into a Lawyer Talker, yet one who can still say "up side the head" with the conviction that I have never learned.
Later my ears were blessed by our young grandson's shy special pronunciation of "Shenandoah." At two, he makes that beautiful name akin to the wash of a whispered poem.
We cross that river often to return to his West Virginia home. First he must help me find the hole in mountain, lovingly and officially named Snickers Gap, which will allow us to cross over and down the ridge. In the valley we lift our feet at the bridge to keep them dry. Then I ask him what river this is, and he whispers sweet honey in my ear. "Shenandoah."
Both of these Word Masters charmed my day, which is why that evening I was quick to jump on a wordsmithing colleague. He disdainfully quoted a news story that said, "A formerly extinct species has been spotted on the island of Bora-Bora."
"You can't be formerly extinct," he correctly railed. "They should have said that a species once thought to be extinct has been discovered on a remote island of French Polynesia."
"Yes," I said, "but you committed an equally serious error. You should never pass up an opportunity to say Bora-Bora."
Or to whisper "Shenandoah," even if you are older than two and in the middle of an important outside-the-office meeting upside Snickers Gap.