The recent furor over Mr. Potato Head reminded me of the Cootie game played in my childhood that employed one die and assorted numbered body parts. Whoever assembled a cootie bug first was the winner.
Oddly, the game introduced me to the world of vocabulary. Through this game, I fell in love with my first word. The “coiled mouthpiece” was called the proboscis. Proboscis!
The very sound of it titillated the imagination. To hear Dad, in stentorian tones, pronounce it and use it in a sentence induced sheer rapture. Instead of melting down over the prospect of losing, I focused on rolling a “lucky number five” and being the first to obtain the coveted proboscis – a win on my terms.
This obsession led me to the Webster’s in search of more words that rolled effortlessly off the tongue and added panache to the written paragraph.
Nancy Drew was shelved in favor of Poe and poetry. Eventually, I wrote my first poem. Thus began the hobby of a lifetime – writing for my own pleasure.
All hail the cootie and his proboscis!
