by Walker Royce
That was a major wake-up call to me. Suddenly, I was acutely attracted to her and wanted to know her better. This was the first seed of our romantic relationship. We lived on opposite coasts, 2700 miles apart. After she solved the puzzle, our communications became friendlier and one thing led to another. We wrote poems, made up puzzles, recapped the highlights of the relatively rare times we were together, and simply learned to communicate intimately through writing.
I am not surprised that so many people start relationships now through internet interactions. Many people—myself included—used too think this was a strange way to court someone. Maybe it is, but it will teach you the power of words. There is nothing like a new relationship to motivate your romantic creativity and improve your communications skills. I imagine that most people consider these discussions high stakes and take great care in investing time to communicate with clarity and purpose.
That Jen and I connected through our love of puzzles may seem far-fetched, coincidental, or trivial. But it is the sort of seemingly insignificant shared interest that underlies many relationships. It is also the sort of sentimental memory that can be used effectively in subsequent romantic communications such as birthday cards, anniversary cards, valentines, and wedding ceremonies. effective romantic impact stems from personalized communications. They need not be works of art, take extensive preparation time, or be mushy. They simply need to come from your heart and reveal some personal connection.
People with children can attest to the great joy of receiving a gift from them. With young kids, the gift is usually handmade and simple: a handprint in a plate of clay, a bunch of doilies glued randomly into a Valentine, a pipe-cleaner reindeer Christmas tree ornament with the child’s name pasted over the reindeer’s face. You save it for years or still remember it vividly because it made an indelible impression on you. Such personalized expressions of love, gratitude, or appreciation are very, very romantic in the truest sense.
The word romantic means characterized by a preoccupation with love; displaying or expressing love or strong affection. Parent-child love is perhaps the strongest kind of love we ever experience. Although this is not what most people think of as romance, the patterns of communication seem congruent to me. If the simplest, most personalized expressions between child and parent are perceived to be the most memorable and joy-producing, why wouldn’t the same thing be true among adults?
I think simple communications and personalized expressions of love between adults are the mainstay of romantic communications. They add energy to a relationship; they are essentially free; and they are far more memorable than a big piece of jewelry, new lingerie, or high-tech golf clubs. I am not talking about mushy love letters, although they too may have their place. I am talking about making a personalized effort to communicate on special occasions like a birthday or anniversary, or even everyday occasions, leaving a note or a voicemail for the person you love.
What does it take to create romance? Some choice words and a little personalization. Here are a few ideas, ranging from trivial to more elaborate expressions.
Instead of just picking out and signing that Hallmark card, try changing the card just a little or adding a sentence to personalize it into something that will be more meaningful.
Send a personalized card for no reason other than to show gratitude or appreciation.
Buy a blank card and write a message appropriate for the occasion.
Leave a loving message or send a loving email for no particular reason. We all expect something on Valentine’s Day, but unexpected loving communications have a very romantic impact.
Construct a word search puzzle where the words being searched are personally relevant to your recipient. For example, for your wife, it could be places where you have vacationed; for your child, it could be trophies or awards they have received; for your girlfriend, it could be places you have visited together on dates.
Construct a gift hunt with a sequence of clues that lead to successive clues, with each one personalized to some facet of your relationship. At the end of the clues can be the gift. This approach is great fun to create and very romantic to receive.
Take a photograph that is meaningful to you (a place, an event, another person, a thing) and write a personalized poem that expresses some aspect of your love, gratitude, or attraction to your partner. Frame the picture so that the poem and the photo are visible or, if the poem is private, so that it appears on the back.
It is folly for me to advise others about how to be romantic. There are so many dimensions and specific parameters to a loving relationship, and they are so widely varying and personal, it is impossible to give specifics that anyone would find useful. Examples from my own experience would not be meaningful—the word choices, the allusions, the symbolism.
The reasoning in the previous sentence strikes me as one of the best yardsticks for judging your success:
A romantic communication should have impact only on the one for whom it is intended.
If your communication would mean the same thing to anyone who read it, it is probably not that romantic.
Suppose you and your wife met at college, in Professor Plum’s history class. You buy your wife an anniversary card that reads: The last 10 years have been the most wonderful years of my life. Now you tailor it by adding a note that says:
The Plum we shared 10 years ago changed my life. I love our history together.
Only you and your wife will understand the note which makes the card more romantic.
A TALE OF TWO POEMS
Poetry offers almost complete creative freedom. You are less constrained by formal rules, and you can break the rules, exercising poetic license, to create artistic or romantic effects. You can twist words, arrange them any way you like, and add other stylistic elements such as tone, alliteration, and rhyme.
I wrote a poem to express my feelings about getting through my mid-life crisis. There is no need for detailed context. Suffice it to say that I was struggling with a lot of stress the year after 9/11, a time that caused many people to stop and reflect. As I look back, I have great appreciation for the three primary women in my life—my wife and two daughters—and for the love and companionship we gave to each other to move from a troubled state into a happy one. Here is the poem.
Togetherness.
Parenthood can change you like nothing else can.
Bringing two daughters into the world turned me into a man.
We got by together. They toddled and grew and became best friends.
Their mom passed on too early and our memories of her have no ends.
We got by together. We escaped to the Sierras each year.
Backpacking with them was a special way of teaching them how to persevere.
Those teenage years can break almost anyone.
Sure there was stress, as well as fun.
College struggles left us all looking in the mirror.
Pursuing happiness elsewhere was distinctly clearer.
When I struggled to dig myself out of a difficult ditch,
They both moved east to help me make a switch.
We all thrived in New England where Jen helped set us free.
She is a giver, a lover, a friend, and an angel for us three.
We got by together.
We will get by together.
I expect most readers to feel blasé about this poem. Because it expresses my personal feelings and love for the people closest to me, it will feel romantic to those people, but not to others. That’s what makes it romantic: It’s personal.
In time, I decided that this simple poem was not personal enough. My wife and daughters know how I love mental torture, word fun, and subtle symbolism. So to make the poem even more personal—in other words, more romantic—I added some special effects that better reflected my personality but required additional mental gymnastics for me. I hope it provides a more loving memory for them.
I asked myself what I could add to the poem. Here’s what
I came up with.
Add some of my favorite words (torture, hairy, conifer).
Make the title a meaningful anagram. (I worked the title to be an anagram of my daughter’s first names, Cameron and Emily.)
Shape the words into a visual. (With a few structural changes, poetic license regarding phrase length on each line, and more thoughtful word choices, the words could be reorganized to represent some memorable symbolism.)
The final poem, which concludes this chapter, took me another hour or so to specialize and customize. The outcome of that hour was a quantum leap in the way the poem expresses my feelings. I wanted these three special women to say, “That is so Walker-like,” “That is so daddy-like.” This is exactly the reaction you are looking for and the sort of romanticism that anyone can practice in their own personal way.
My purpose in this chapter was to expose readers to another form of acutely sensitive high-stakes communications. Most people feel uncomfortable in romantic communications and other emotional interactions such as anniversary celebrations, valentines, and expressions of sympathy. If they didn’t, sales would be off at greeting card stores.
Writing this strange chapter was a useful mental exercise that forced me to get out of my normal default mindset and emote openly. I feel great when I can enter this other world and act like a romantic. It is freeing, and it feels good, especially when it makes someone else feel loved.
My
One
Miracle
Parenthood
can change you
like nothing else can.
Raising two daughters
transformed me into a man.
We got by together.
They toddled and grew
and became best of friends.
Their mom passed on too early
Our memories of her have no ends.
We got by together.
We escaped to the Sierras each year.
Backpacking with them was a special
way of teaching them how to persevere.
Those teenage years can be torture to everyone.
Sure there was stress, as well as fun.
College struggles left us all looking in the mirror.
Pursuing happiness elsewhere was distinctly clearer.
When I struggled to dig myself out of a big hairy ditch
they both moved east to help me make a remarkable switch.
We all thrived in New England where Jen helped set us free.
She is a giver, a lover, a friend, and a coniferous angel on our family tree.
We got by together.
We will get by
Together.
My one miracle is togetherness.
Conclusions
The ability to communicate well affects everyone’s pursuit of happiness. My goal in this book was to expose some of the more interesting aspects of English, its diverse usage models, its humorous side, and a few of its perverse complexities. I hope this material stimulates readers to appreciate the language and increases their commitment to communicate more effectively. Writing and researching this material was certainly stimulating and educational for me. I was amazed at how many web sites, books, and references there are with interesting perspectives on the use of English. I just had to look for them.
In several places throughout this book, I have emphasized that words count. They define your writing style and your speaking style, and they are crucial to communicating clearly. Making lists of your favorite words and the words you loath the most is an enjoyable and enlightening exercise. Providing some brief rationale on why they make your lists will cause you to reflect on word selection.
Here are my 10 favorite and 10 un-favorite words, with short descriptions of why they make my top-10 lists.
MY 10 FAVORITE WORDS
Hairy. I didn’t know this was one of my favorite words until my kids informed me that I use it all the time to refer to something that is complicated. Luckily for me, Dictionary.com lists an informal definition as full of hardship or difficulty.
Circumlocution. A great word. It is hard to parse, fun to say, and self-defining. It requires no emoticon because it carries its derogatory tone right along with it. Circumlocution is my pet peeve. Rigmarole is a good synonym.
Conifer. This taxonomic order of beautiful living plants has a descriptive name that rolls off the tongue. It also represents a symbolic word for my wife, who shares my love of conifers. The symbolic connection struck me because when we met, her last name started with “con” and her first name ended in “ifer.”
Torture. I love to torture people in a mentally stimulating way. I tend to use this word with a positive connotation when I direct it toward other people but infer a negative connotation when it is directed toward me.
Coprophagy. As a puppy, our dog had a bad habit of eating his poop. (I realized that shit-eating grin has a factual basis. He seemed to be smiling at us and enjoying our convulsions every time he wolfed down dog-doo.) Horrified, I researched this problem on the web. I discovered the word coprophagy, which means the consumption of feces by certain animal species. Unbelievable! There’s a word for everything.
There is also a company that claims to have a cure. They produce For-Bid, a powder that you sprinkle on the dog’s food. We ordered some. Here is a quote from the product literature:
“Simply sprinkle on dog food and after the food is consumed, this will impart a forbidden and unpalatable taste to the feces.”
When I read this, I went berserk. I had found one of those humorous nuggets you just can’t make up. It has to be true to be so funny. My whole life, I thought that tastes like crap was the ultimate in bad taste. Someone invented a powder that would make crap taste worse? The people who conceived of, tested, and marketed this product are probably all dead now. They died laughing.
Knucklehead. This word makes my list because I use it often to describe myself, and because its true derivation is so different than one would expect. Most of us think this is a synonym for ass, birdbrain, blockhead, bonehead, buffoon, dimwit, dolt, donkey, dope, dork, drip, dufus, dullard, dunderhead, fool, goof ball, ignoramus, imbecile, jerk, lame-brain, moron, nerd, nincompoop, nitwit, numskull, oaf, pinhead, scatterbrain, simpleton, and twit. (Thank you, Dictionary.com.) But Wikipedia tells us that the knucklehead was a Harley-Davidson motorcycle engine that was so-named because of the distinct shape of the rocker boxes. As the design of Harley-Davidson engines has evolved through the years, the distinctive shape of the valve covers has allowed Harley enthusiasts to classify an engine simply by looking at the shape of the cover. A knucklehead engine has round knobs on the cover that resemble knuckles, giving the knucklehead its name.
Fido. Alas, this is not a recognized word that means dog, but it is a real word. Dictionary.com lists two meanings: (1) a system for evaporating the fog above airfield runways by the heat from burners (an acronym for Fog Investigation Dispersal Operation), or (2) a defective coin (an acronym for Freaks, Irregulars, Defects, and Oddities). Nevertheless, I use it to show affection to any dog, especially mine, like most people use honey or darling or other terms of affection for their sweetheart.
Miaoued. The cat miaoued! It is allowable in Scrabble® and the only word I have found with all 5 vowels in a row.
Zarf. My only explanation for why I like this word is its beautiful sound. A zarf is an ornamental coffee cup holder with no handle, usually made of metal.
Whatchamacallit. This word is a classic placeholder for something you just can’t define with a better word, either because there is no good descriptor or you can’t remember the right word. It is a useful contraction of what-you-may-call-it. Other good words in this class include contraption, doohickey, gizmo, and thingamajig.
MY 10 UN-FAVORITE WORDS
Actually. This is my favorite word to hate. It is the most annoying, overused, and misused word in our language, an empty placeholder used to fill space.
But. I was born a cynic, and this is a word that comes altoge
ther too naturally for me. I need to cut back consciously on using the word but, but it still remains my top critique of my own communications style and word selection. (Rats! That resolution didn’t get far.)
Very. This is another word that I, and most other people, overuse. As I edited an early manuscript of this book in preparation for my copy editor, I found that I had used the word 164 times. After assessing each usage, I ended up deleting 120 of these. Most of the instances were easily deleted and the sentences sounded better.
Cacophony. This word has its place, but I always misspell it and it just sounds too smarty-pants. I once sat in a lecture next to a mild-mannered mid-westerner with a dry wit. The speaker complained about “a cacophony of voices” rebelling against something. It was the first time I had heard that word and I turned to my neighbor and said, “What did that mean?” He just smiled and said, “I think it means shitload.” In that context, he was right.
Do. This is another overused, redundant word. Do you ever hear people say, “I do think...” or “I do want...” or “I do (pick a verb)...”? Why add the do when the verb works fine without it? My guess is that this usage stems from a reverse double negative. Here is my amateur psychoanalysis. Many people who are born cynics have the word don’t loaded and ready to shoot at all times. You need don’t to negate many verbs (like, want, think, make), and negation is the natural default thought for pessimists and contrarians. So their brains naturally substitute the positive word do because they need to consciously negate their negative instincts. This is a pretty harsh judgment, but it might get these doers to observe their use of do a little more dutifully.