Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Onomatopoeia!!

My brother told me that when I tell him stories my regular use of onomatopoeias makes him laugh. I hadn't noticed my use of such exciting language until he mentioned it which in turn made me laugh.

After church one Sunday (it had been sunny for a few days and somewhat warm for winter) I was happily surprised to find an inch or two of slush snow to scrape off my car. I loved it. It was the kind of slush that makes glorious schlopping sounds when you step in it and just solid enough not to get one's feet terribly wet when trekking across parking lots. I successfully cleared my car and went on my way out of the parking lot as the sky half-heartedly rain-hailed.

I got to the road in front of my church and found that the roads too were wet and delightfully slushy so I drove slowly towards the hill I had to venture down to be on my way home. A couple of cars came up the hill headed the the other direction and I paid them no real heed until they were even with me. They were driving quite a bit faster than I was and slush was spraying out from their tires...."SLUSH!" Most of my windshield was covered in the opaque sloppy mess and just the noise it made when it hit nearly had me jump out of my shoes. Luckily my windshield wipers were already on and wiped it away, and by the time it had and when my shoes recovered from being jumped out of, I couldn't help but laugh. The familiar image of someone waiting under umbrella at a bus stop in the rain only to be splashed unsuspectingly by a passing car (in the movies often by a marvelously huge tidal wave of a splash) and left standing, dripping wet, umbrella blown uselessly inside-out by the blow...

I continued on my way home in the on-off rain-snow. About the halfway mark it started snowing full on and the snowflakes kept growing and growing. At their peak, they were the biggest snowflakes I had ever seen in my life and you could hear their soft "plump" when they hit my windshield and left palm sized splotches of snowflake (huge cookie size is the way I explained it at the time). I was in awe and grinning like a goon the whole time. I love snowflakes. I wanted to turn back around and just pull over on the side of the highway to just watch, but my family dinner called to my tummy and that was still another hours drive away after I got home. I left my snowflakes as I turned the corner onto another highway and within two minutes it had stopped snowing and I believe the sun even came out before it started raining again.

I told my brother my story excitedly while on our way to said family dinner (with probably a few more onomatopoeias than I can remember now) and we laughed. I had never before noticed I made such good use of such exciting language until it was pointed out. We then laughed about how "abbreviation" is such a long word, and asked why onomatopoeia isn't its namesake. I then decided is should be, so, onomatopoeia became an onomatopoeia. And there was much onomatopoeia-ing.

Until next time, consider yourself thoroughly onomatopoeiaed.