Bits and Pieces of Diverse Happenings:

I was walking on Third Avenue in Manhattan peeking into the many restaurants and food shops, when an elderly man with a walker called out to me.

"Norman, Norman, why do you walk by me without saying hello? Are you mad at me?" I looked around 360 degrees, before I realized he was shouting at me. I walked toward him with my right hand outstretched and I shook his hand firmly. His blue eyes opened wide.

I said, "I'm not Norman, but it is a pleasure to shake your hand." We parted ways. Actually, I have been mistaken all my life for somebody else. I like to think I am unique, but I guess I am not.

How many times did you think for sure you recognized someone and had it turn out it wasn't even close to that person. Just as a person can look or sound familiar, so can a word.

While reading a book the reader has three choices. When he/she comes upon a word that they don't quite understand, they can either 1) put down the book and look up the troublesome word in the dictionary. This breaks the mood and often the reader doesn't go back to the book , or 2) take a guess at the meaning of the word and the context in the sentence and paragraph and probably get close to the word's meaning and go on reading. 3) Write down the word and look it up later.

The following words I wrote down while reading the Sunday New York Times, I went to the dictionary and rooted out the meaning:

1) Impecunious - poverty

2) palimpsest - scrapped again. Reused paper or parchment that can be erased and used again. Many poverty stricken painters, painted over old works because they were too poor to buy a new canvas.

3) Gevaltize - this word has a Yiddish root, which means "the sky is falling." Gevalt is a cry when a person is faced with a horrible event. It is a wail to the heavens, not to anybody in particular.

4) Soigné - means elegantly maintained (French pronunciation).

I hope I do not forget the meaning of these words even though I doubt that I will use any of these four words in an everyday context or in daily speech. It is still fun to stop every once in a while and add a new word to my vocabulary.

Words and People - People and Words. They are not always what they seem to be!