Poetry Friday WORD for tomorrow, plus Mona goes slightly nuts

In my college days, I once got so drunk that I passed out on the front steps of a local restaurant. With my head on the bottom step and my feet on the top.

It was not my finest hour.

I’m much older now, and wiser, and blahblahblah, but still…every time I pass that restaurant, I remember the whirling feeling of my belly and the late-night nachos I ate to keep the Drunk At Bay, and the feet of the kindly people who walked by my downward-pointing head, asking, “Are you okay?”

The Poetry Friday WORD for tomorrow is STEP. Please feel free to use it in your blog post tomorrow, in whatever fashionable shoe style you choose…story, poem, photo, drunk narrative, 12-step program of your very own design…. You may use it as a noun, verb, adjective…you may even expand it to the word “steppe”, which M-W says is derived from the Russian language, which reminds me of vodka, which reminds me of being drunken upside-down on the restaurant steps….

I have this ‘thing’ with language…a love affair of sorts…where once we were just friends. If you gave me a dictionary and a desert island, I could have a really good time, especially if there was also a steady stream of clean water, cheese, and sunscreen. Perhaps some herring in a lovely sour cream and onion sauce. But I digress. Digest. Whatever.

“Steppe” is a word in whole…that’s how it’s spelled, for reals. Other words that try to be cute, that try TOO hard to be something they’re not, should be immediately stricken from the English language for being Just Dumb.

Words like “shoppe”, for example. I hate it.
Hate.
It.

When a store in the Midwest thinks they’re being all cute and mom-and-pop-py when they call themselves a “shoppe”, I want to poke the very blue eyes out of my head. One of these days I shall very well SNAP. I shall stomp my picky feet into the establishment, demand the attention of the “shoppe” owner, poke my finger in their face and say, “Listen…Bub…you’re not Geoffrey Chaucer...this (ptooey)…THING…is NOT a “shoppe”, m’kay? It’s a “shop”. When you spell it like “s-h-o-p-p-e”, you make a mockery of all that is good and holy. You are a poser, sir/madam. You do not deserve something as regal as a “shoppe”. Stop the shenanigans before I open up a 10-gallon can of whoop-ass on your “shoppe” and take those extra two letters and stick ‘em up your shop-side.”

Or something like that.

Man, I think I have some deeply-buried hostility bubbling to the surface today. And that's how I know I need decaf, like, right now....