They Call Me Wordsworth

I was reading Addison a library book called The Boy Who Loved Words tonight, and I really liked it. A lot of the words in it were over Addison's head. A few of them were over mine. Oh, Addison liked it, too. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you figured out what the book is about by deciphering the title. If you know me at all, you may have made one or two other conclusions about why I like the book that go without saying. This is me not saying them. And I'll go ahead and not say them about Addison either.

Heather has read the book to him a couple of times before, but it's not one of those "read it again" books that gets worn out the first day you bring it home. So I was positively tickled, given all the reasons that have gone without saying, when Addison quoted part of the book to me as we were reading it. I think it's hilarious what little boys tend to memorize, but this one . . . I don't know, it touched me. There are certain words he can read, but it was pretty clear he was spouting this off from memory.

So there I was, trucking through the book, when it gets to the point when the Boy Who Loved Words finally had a reason to feel proud about his passion, and when the beneficiary of his bon mots asked the boy his name, he said (and by "he," I mean Addison), "They call me Wordsworth." It's the happiest point in a rather long and wordy book, and that line, that one line, was the part that Addison recited unprompted. What got to me wasn't the fact that he remembered it--it was that it meant something to him. Okay, probably not as much as it meant to me, but it clearly made an impression on him. He was waiting for it, he knew it was coming, and he pounced on it the moment the opportunity arose to make sure I didn't say it before he did.

I'll let a lot more of my thoughts go without saying, but they were all good and buoying and delightful. Read the book, you'll understand.

Oh, and the change for the day is that I'm trying to stop complaining about people in general. That gives me nothing to talk about except this sappy stuff. Sorry.