Thanks 😊

I remember once seeing a headline in the Baltimore Sun in which almost every word could be interpreted as either a noun or a verb (project, finish, etc.); it was written "telegraph style" with no articles, and I had a hard time deciding which of 2^n readings was intended. I wish I had saved a copy.

A professor broke that one down starting with the word A. A can mean one, or it can mean any. Cola flavored soda is a common confusion of ingredients - Coke is also, but Coke's common confusion is unique. A not-to-said-aloud potus lives a common confusion.

where a man had a full conversation with a woman, whose only response was, “No”

There’s a hundred ways to say “No”
and have it mean a hundred different things

that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. So many rules in our language, but also a more number of exceptions to those rules... as well as weird little factoids like this one.

When I was a kid at home, like so many I'd go to bed at night with a flashlight, reading under the covers so nobody would see I was still awake. Thing is, instead of reading the latest fantasy or Sci Fi novel, I'd go to bed with this enormous Unabridged Funk and Wagnell's Dictionary. The book must have been 6" thick, and was like 12x11 in width and height. A good 1/3 of the book was about words... factoids, history of, and other miscellaneous about words. I loved it. In fact, when my Mom died earlier this year and we were going through boxes of her stuff, I found that same Funk and Wagnells dictionary. I brought it home with me. It's like I'd discovered a long-lost friend! (LOL)

we didnt have a lot of books at home. but i poured through that oed all the time.
i wish i had hung on to the few books we had. i regret not reading the collected works of mark twain that we had.

we had door to door salesmen, right? I got an entire Funk and Wagnells Encyclopedia set, thanks to him. So much information and so much fun going through it all. And I didn't even start with "s" first! (LOL) Guess you can tell I was more a reader than a sports person (gryn).

spent a lot of time at the library, too. an assisted living facility was built across the street from my house when i was about 7 or 8, and the bookmobile used to come once a week. if i wanted something, they’d bring it the next week. talk about service.
it was a long walk to the library, but it was a great 1. a carnegie. y cant we have good rich ppl any more?

the cost and trouble of these kinds of services any longer, so believe our corporate masters. I remember the bookmobiles, too... although I lived in a small enough town I'd hop on my bicycle and ride down to the library, enjoying the sense of freedom it gave me. And nothing can dim the light of my memories during Halloween at that point in time. Today's "trunk or treating" can't hold a candle to it.

Talking about travelling salesmen... One afternoon my family was picking on me (good naturedly) about my height (or lack thereof). At my tallest, I only reached 4'11". Well, Dad was 6', my mom was 5'9" and my brother was 6'2"... even my little sister was way taller than I was, tho there was 8 years difference in our ages. I took it for awhile, and then when I got mom off to herself and she was still kidding me, I laughed and asked her if there wasn't something she wanted to tell me about the Hoover salesman or the Fuller Brush guy?! She turned 3 shades of red and said I'd won the day with my comment. But no... I was a "throwback" to a generation that no one could remember... as EVERYBODY in the immediate and past known generations were at a minimum average height, and the rest... men as well as women... were tall for their age. So, to get back at me she called me "mutant" the rest of the joke fest among us kids; Dad said I was a throwback to the Picts that must have been in his bloodline. I liked that last comment! (LOL)

I laughed earlier about reading the unabridged dictionary and not starting with "S". My real education came when I sneaked one of my Mom's new Doubleday Bookclub books from her bedstand and started reading it. It was called "Portnoy's Complaint" by Phillip Roth. I think I learned as much through it as most boys did with Penthouse. And I always made sure to put it back on Mom's stand exactly like it'd been when I picked it up... couldn't have her catching on to me! (LOL)