czechoslovakia
every now and then, when my brother and i played hangman, we picked themes. one time, we chose countries. when my turn came, i knew i had a winning country in mind, a country full of the consonants we only guessed at the end, in desperation, long after we had ruled out s, t, r and l. i ran to the bedroom and looked at my pink old-fashioned alarm clock. the numbers had small glow in the dark dots next to them which no longer worked. at the back of the clock, below the lever, was a small inscription: “made in czechoslovakia.” i memorized the letters, ran back to my brother, and wrote 14 low lines on the piece of paper. my brother guessed the word immediately. he had an alarm clock too, only his was black, and it still glowed in the dark.
frisky
i learned that the french word frisquet and the english word frisky meant two different things when, after drinking a lot of wine on a crisp summer night, i told my friend charles i was feeling the latter. in truth, i was feeling chilly; in hindsight, i was probably feeling both.
tryst
i did not know what tryst meant until april 21, 2000, at noontime. i learned the word tryst before i learned the word frisky.
toboggan
there was a young boy, a loner—he got to school early, when the school buses hadn’t yet arrived, and the school yard was still empty. he wore a brown winter suit and spoke like a young french boy. one morning, he approached me and asked me if i liked toboggans. i enjoyed sledding, but in my mind toboggans belonged in martine picture books, and i could never understand why one would use that word out loud, when there were other words that could be used. it was the only question the young boy asked me, and i never saw him after that.
writing/astute
after reading some of the things i wrote, brett taught me that writing only took one t, not two. i was young; he thought i was astute. i thought so too, even though i misspelled writing, and i didn’t know what astute meant until he told me that i had that quality in me. i appreciated his delicate, discerning eyes.