#454 Diff-abled

I probably have some mental disease or something but I’m one of those people that gets caught up in the sounds of words or phrases. Like that condition where people report that they see sounds. Or that numbers have intrinsic colors. I think it’s called synesthesia. These people’s experience of the word crackle is like seeing a fire pop across the hearth. The sight of a waterfall triggers a cascade of notes in their brain. Franz Liszt was said to have had this disorder—or perhaps “different order” is more like it, though kind of cumbersome. How about diff-order? It’s quicker to say. Differently-abled instead of disabled is nice to but diff-abled would shorten up the conversation.
So sometimes I wonder at how little it takes to shift meaning. There’s the classic psychological test. A tester holds up two diagrams. One of them is spiky and angular the other one is rounded and curved. He then shows the testee two words—kiki and bobu. Nonsense words, not related to any true English words, and yet invariably, when asked to match the word to the diagram, people give the spiky picture the name kiki and the round figure gets the name bobu. Go figure. So I’m amazed when you take a word like congenial—with its shapes of sounds and positive and friendly association—and by shifting one sound—neee—end up with the word congeal. Now the blood is congealing around the cooling cut of meat. The curds are congealing in the whey. And a word that meant good times and togetherness, congenial, becomes congeal, essentially another word for clot. I have a good friend who as a child watched Mission Impossible on TV. Every time the tape played in the beginning of the show, she thought the guy telling Peter Graves the plan said “the secretary will disembowel all knowledge of your actions.” It makes a certain amount of sense. Particularly if you are dealing with a spy program where the possibility of torture if the people are caught is so strong. And in the sense the secretary is cutting the guts out of the knowledge in question and making it seem as if it never existed, it works. The Libby/Rove trial has been that way. The defense has tried to cut the guts out of the prosecutor’s case.
Or how about the word trifecta? Is it just me or does it sound like some sort of infection? I mentioned to my friend Kevin that trifecta sounded like a social disease. He said maybe a social disease that you get from a ménage a trois. And then there’s the doctor in town whose sign says cranio-sacral therapy. Puzzling. Cranio is Latin for head. Sacral is the section of the spine that plugs into the hips. Where barristas get tattooed. And carpenters put their pencils. Derriere. Their rear. So does a cranio-sacral therapist treat people with their heads up their—ask me no questions I’ll tell you no lies. But I will disembowel any knowledge of your diff-order.
America, ya gotta love it