The Dictionary

A funny thing to be sentimental about, I'm sure. A dictionary? 

We were a home school family. I home schooled kids for a lot of years during the 80s and the 90s. This dictionary was something that got used a lot, since it was The Final Word for Things in the English Language. It's full of a lot of things that you don't think of as being in a dictionary, such as Flags of the World or Musical Terms or the Annual Percentage Rate Table for Payment Plans. Well, see the contents page below.

It was a book to grab when you wanted to know something, because there was a lot in it. 

However.

Now I use it for other things. I still look up stuff sometimes, but usually when I open it I am looking for dried leaves, or dried flowers, or papers that need flattening. At the moment it is on top of a linoleum block that needs flattening. As well as holding leaves and a flower or two. 

I don't know if anyone else is sentimental of a dictionary. This is the type of dictionary that was downstairs on a big stand in the library where I spent a lot of time as a child and teenager. The librarians knew me by name, I'm sure. I would enter every reading contest I could. I remember one summer we were supposed to read 25 books, and if you did, you got a little prize. Well I got to 25 pretty quickly, but I was embarrassed, so I didn't claim that I did all at once. The librarian knew, but I didn't tell anyone else. I read more than 100 books that summer. I got a little metal sword for participating in that. I still have it, as far as I know. 

My favorite book to read at the library was, you guessed it, that big old dictionary. In it, I learned that a "dude" was first used  to mean a pimple or boil on someone’s backside, caused by riding in the saddle all day when one wasn’t used to it. So it started out as derogatory term. Bet you didn't know that. LOL

Of course there was much more to know than that. Words are fascinating. Now, we have the internet, but when I was young, you had to look it up in a book. That book had so much in it that it was my first go-to. If I couldn't find it there, then there was the card catalog. If I couldn't find it there, then there was a librarian who knew EVERYTHING. 

I thought it would be fun to be a librarian, but other things caught my attention. 

So I love my dictionary. And the stuff that's in it.