My First Dictionary

Me and Cloudbusting are cousins. We share a lot of commonalities. I saw this My First Dictionary blog over at her place. I'm not surprised it piqued both of our fancies :)

When we were little tackers, we both enjoyed English composition classes, making giant paragraphs out of one sentence. That was on the days when we were both at school. We used to take so many days off school that one would sometimes ring up the other and see if they were home as well, and then we used to talk on the phone for several hours, magnificently recovered from the ills that prevailed at 8 o'clock in the morning.

We used to get the death notices and sit and write out all the names from them. Weird, huh? But we loved names, and there was something ruminative about doing this strange little exercise. We got to go "ew" at the Myrtles and Mabels, and be saddened at any young children whose notices appeared. We had long-ranging discussions about people who had flat bums like bongo drums and recorded them onto audio tape. We were ABBA in the lounge room, singing into the extension cord. We were orphans in the ferns alongside the house, struggling to survive.

We made fun of Mary, who was the feature character in a series of illustrated dictionaries that CB had. Mary was insufferably perfect. That was fun, hating Mary.

So I'm not surprised that this blog, My First Dictionary, appeals to both of us. It is the grown-up version of those dictionaries with a giant dose of cynicism. Deliciousness :)