The Society For The Prevention of Abuse To Unabridged Dicitonaires

 

When I was in school, the unabridged dictionary sat like an alien death weapon on a podium too small for the monstrosity. Most of the boys and girls in my class were afraid to even touch it. The librarian treated it like some kind of ancient relic from Vulcan.

Then, one day, it disappeared. It was piled in a gargantuan book-pyramid with numerous other dishonored lonely books. The speckled-faced librarian gathered them in a wheelbarrow and positioned them behind a hideously wide red truck.

In the morning, as I walked to school, I saw the red truck parked haphazardly upon the mound beyond the northern end of the school building. I walked over, peered into the bed. Below the truck bed, a few pieces of browned paper lay scattered about. I reached down and found they were crumpled into dust when touched.

The unabridged dictionary- along with other notable books- met their death that day…before I found the remnants of ash-like fragments.

I confess today that I do not own an unabridged dictionary. Someday, I will buy one….in secret. But for now, it has become a problem.

It is because I get words stuck in my head and often have to search to find their meaning.  So many times I cannot find it in any of the mamby-pamby dictionaries online or in any public library.

In fact, while I was dour, writing a very serious post, I got a word stuck in my head. Not like a song stuck in my head, but an “unknown” (for best effects, please pronounce with a Scottish accent) word. I flung open my dictionaries, scavenged the online dictionary venues, to no avail. I nearly flailed myself upon a piece of plastic to buy a subscription to the unabridged dictionary online…OK, I am exaggerating…but repented when I did some cost analysis.

You can read an account of my Shakespearean disgust at not finding that word in one of my former posts. 

But for now, I am calling on all students of life... those graduates from the University of hard knocks, soft knocks, and knock knocks, to rally the troops and demand your local library association bring back the massive volume of The Fun Stuff.