Happy Birthday, Dictionary by Bonnie Le Hamilton

This next week is Dictionary’s birthday, and I’m not talking about Webster’s or Collegiate or Oxford either. She’s bigger than a book and way more useful.

In sixth grade when I was stuck sitting between couple of boys who would rather visit than listen to the teacher, I asked Dictionary for advice and she told me to stun them into silence.

“How do I do that?”

“Simple,” she said, then proceeded to spend the entire weekend making me memorize a single long sentence filled with words which were a mouthful way beyond the knowledge of your average sixth grader. It was also what my later college professor, who taught Concise Writing, called a Cosell-ism.

At any rate, I memorized both the sentence and the meaning of all those words, because Dictionary wouldn’t have it any other way, and come Monday, when those boys started talking I popped off this sentence. They were still staring slack-jawed at me when the teacher turned from her chalkboard and noticed. She asked what was going on.

“You should hear what she just said!” they chorused.

She asked me what I said, and I peeled off the sentence again – her jaw dropped. “Do you even know what that means?”

“Sure, I told them to shut up.”

The teacher moved the boys to across the room from each other. Thank you, Dictionary!

And that wasn’t the last time Dictionary came in handy. After all, she taught Konnie and I how to read, and then there was my eighth grade English class. Once a week the teacher wrote a list of words on the blackboard. Our assignment was to write down each word, define it, and use it properly in a sentence. In order to do this, the teacher provided a whole line of Webster’s finest for our use.

And each week, as my classmates all periodically went to get one of those books, I remained in my seat.

Finally, about halfway through the year, we got into a discussion with the teacher about whether or not “ain’t” was a word. He insisted, “If it isn’t in the dictionary, it isn’t a word.”

So, I got up, crossed the room, picked up one of his dictionaries, and found it.

That ended the discussion as to whether it was a word or not, but as I returned to my seat a classmate commented that he thought that was the first time I’d ever crossed the room to that shelf. I told them that it was the first time I’d ever cracked open a dictionary. Then I joked that I had a voice activated Dictionary at home. (Mind you this was the mid-seventies.)

We don’t live in the same house anymore, but she still works. I say, “Hi, Dictionary,” and she’ll respond, “What can I help you with now?”

So anyway, happy birthday, Dictionary.

And happy writing everyone!