Words and Thoughts — November 16, 2023
Hello again, alleged readers. This week, I purchased a box. This box came filled with about twelve cans of carbonated liquid, presumably to preserve the structural integrity of the box. I was not in immediate need of the box. However, one can never be overprepared. Boy howdy, if I had a Euro for every time I thought, “If I had a box measuring 4.8 inches X 21 inches X 7 inches, I could carry so much more of this cat food than I can with my small hands.” Could really carry anything though, not just cat food: Seventeen figs, maybe. Five cool rocks, definitely. The MANY Euros won from the “if I had a Euro every time” game, for sure. Roughly a dozen cans of pop, possibly.
It’s high time for ol’ Stav here to get started on his New Year’s Resolution to be more proactive and prepared! Well, now when people see me with my empty box, they’ll say, “Wow, what a prepared and put-together individual! Should he need that box, he sure is ready!”
Let me tell you about something I wasn’t ready for. If you’d like to guess what I’m about to tell you about, please, do so now. I can only assume that your guess was that I wasn’t ready for Winnie Cooper and Kevin Arnold to NOT end up together at the end of The Wonder Years. I should mention that my preceding statement is, in fact, a spoiler for the 1988–1993 television program The Wonder Years. If you didn’t want to know the ending, or just didn’t want to relive the shock and devastation of Winnie and Kevin’s ultimately unshared path in this life, then you should not have read that sentence. Word of advice from someone desperately trying to be more prepared in general: Always read one sentence ahead before you start reading the previous sentence. Hash tag prepped as the youth might say.
Good guess, alleged reader! But not correct. If you’d skipped ahead like I suggested, you’d know this already, and would’ve almost certainly guessed correctly. The thing that I wasn’t ready for that I was going to tell you about in the last paragraph was actually “Hooked on Phonics”. That thing hit me like a brick. There was young Stav, unsuspecting, unprepared young Stav, just wallowing about in illiterate bliss. And THEN, suddenly, and with no prior warning, some sadistic grown-up begins subjecting helpless Stav to this terrifying brainwashing about words. If you’ve read ahead to this point, as previously suggested, you might find yourself a bit confused as to why I’m discussing Hooked on Phonics with you all. For context and clarity, you should probably stop, go back, and read from a bit earlier in this correspondence; but not too far, lest you be surprised and caught off guard by what’s coming next.
Baseball in Dutch is “Honkbal”. Honkbal! This shouldn’t be all that surprising however, as many of the Dutch people I’ve met have actually just been geese.
At least ten honkballs would likely fit in the box. Probably could not fit a goose in there though. Probably should not try to fit a goose in the box.
