As dusk settles in,
a swarm
of Italian-made scooters
roars past,
engines singing,
“Make haste!”
in chorus
to the darkening sky.

Today's #vss365 word is Vespers. Vespers? What am I supposed to do with that?

"Vespers" and "Vespas" are homonyms in my local accent, so that's where my mind went, combining a set of prayers I've never prayed with a type of scooter I've never ridden using a linguistic device that doesn't work in most parts of the world.

It was to be a third grader learning about homonyms in a Boston area school. "Sale" and "sail" met the definition, but so did "hot" and "heart," the only difference being that one would arbitrarily earn a happy checkmark and the other a big red X.

We were presented two possibilities: One, that the third graders at Franklin Elementary were right and Ms. Clark, Webster's Dictionary, and the rest of the English-speaking world were wrong; or Two, that we could never trust our own ears and tongues ever again.

Learning about homonyms in the Boston area was a demoralizing experience, an assault on our sense of identity, but we got our revenge with the release of "Dora the Explorer." It's just not possible to sing that theme song without dropping that final R.

"Roar! I'm a staple remover!"

7/365 - More Tomorrow.

As dusk settles in,
a swarm
of Italian-made scooters
roars past,
engines singing,
“Make haste!”
in chorus
to the darkening sky.

Today's #vss365 word is Vespers. Vespers? What am I supposed to do with that?

"Vespers" and "Vespas" are homonyms in my local accent, so that's where my mind went, combining a set of prayers I've never prayed with a type of scooter I've never ridden using a linguistic device that doesn't work in most parts of the world.

It was to be a third grader learning about homonyms in a Boston area school. "Sale" and "sail" met the definition, but so did "hot" and "heart," the only difference being that one would arbitrarily earn a happy checkmark and the other a big red X.

We were presented two possibilities: One, that the third graders at Franklin Elementary were right and Ms. Clark, Webster's Dictionary, and the rest of the English-speaking world were wrong; or Two, that we could never trust our own ears and tongues ever again.

Learning about homonyms in the Boston area was a demoralizing experience, an assault on our sense of identity, but we got our revenge with the release of "Dora the Explorer." It's just not possible to sing that theme song without dropping that final R.

"Roar! I'm a staple remover!"

7/365 - More Tomorrow.