#488 Say Cheese

One of the greatest things about getting older is you begin to see the world as a wild and wonderful place with so many possibilities, if only you back off from your prejudices a little bit and open up. Admittedly, opening up is hard sometimes, especially when part of your protective shell is crusty and horny from scar tissue. Horniness can be both good and bad.
But the first step in breaking out of the crusty chrysalis of self-important youth and emerging into the butterfly of middle age is to get over oneself. Don’t be so convinced what you think you knew is what is. Like the words connote and denote. I always thought they meant the same thing. Then I was writing one of these pieces that I knew a friend of mine who knows English good was gonna be reading, so I looked it up. Denote means to be a name or designation for. Connote means to suggest or imply in addition to literal meaning. Cheesy can denote having lots of cheese. It can connote tackiness as well.
Or how about gratin? That same friend and I were having a discussion with another friend. She pointed out to us that gratin did not necessarily mean a dish with cheese. Full of myself as I was, I doubted her. I mean, everybody knows au gratin potatoes have cheese. Scalloped potatoes have milk. But knowing the person, I began to doubt myself. Good thing. I was wrong. Turns out gratin is a French word for a casserole with a crusty top. Said crustiness can be facilitated by cheese to be sure, but can also be achieved with breadcrumbs and béchamel sauce. Gratin also connotes top brass. Whether because the whole thing has a golden crust, or military officers have a crusty attitude, I have no idea. The important thing, friends, is that au gratin potatoes, Kraft propaganda to the contrary, do not have to contain cheese. And although I love cheesiness in all its forms, having this woman tear away my self-important au gratin prejudice left me with a cool new fancy word for crusty.
America, ya gotta love it