I can't speak no English real good.

I've started reading for leisure again.  Right now, I'm just reading silly chick lit, in which I've never been interested before, but which I have found to be sort of soothing to read during my lunch breaks at work.  I spend all day explaining things to people.  Some of it is complex and deserving of an explanation from someone who is well-versed in the material, and some of it is painfully simple to understand.  The point is that on my breaks from this drudgery, I just want something mildly entertaining and easy to follow to occupy my time and give my mind a break.

Tonight I was curled up in my chaise lounge reading one of these books, and I came across this sentence:

"If Leo thinks that...well, he has another think coming."

Another think coming?

My mom has always been the person in our family to rule on all matters of uncertainty.  Whenever my brother and I have a disagreement, the one who is more sure of their point of view throws down the ultimate challenge:  "EVEN ASK MOM." 

So I went to ask my mom if this was a typo or if someone like me could have gotten this wrong.  Could someone who loves words, someone who has never had the most sophisticated vocabulary, but who considers herself to have a fairly decent grasp of grammar, who never has trouble with who versus whom, who hates incorrect expressions like "a whole nother," who loves to point out when other people use incorrect expressions like that with an air of superiority because she would never make such a mistake, and who would NEVER use a run-on sentence like this unless purposefully doing so to be obnoxious possibly have been misusing this expression?

My mom said it was a typo, that the expression was definitely "another thing coming."  My dad actually disagreed with her.  My dad is not the go-to guy on issues of grammar and spelling.  Ever.  But the more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense.  If you think that, then you've got another think coming. 

So I Googled it, and sure enough, over 7 million results for "you've got another think or thing coming."  The hits that didn't have to do with the Judas Priest song all had to do with "another thing coming" as a mispronunciation of the expression.  It's supposed to be a purposefully ungrammatical joke.  I saw it best explained on a language forum that it would just not sound quite so snappy if you said, "If you think that, you're wrong, so wait for some new thoughts to come."

Today will be known as the day I actually learned something from chick lit and the day my dad actually ruled correctly on a grammar question when my mother did not.  Oh, the great pain of disillusionment. 

Death, Life, and Rebirth

Last week, my best friend told me that he'd received a text message that a friend he'd known from back home had just died.  A few days later (it might have even been the following day), while having dinner with him in a restaurant, he came back from the bathroom to find me staring at the same kind of message on my own cell phone--someone I knew from high school had just died.  They say that death comes in threes, and this time was not an exception.  The day after that, my mom told me that a friend and neighbor of my grandparents had just died.  Three deaths in as many days, none of them directly affecting me, all of them touching the lives of people that I knew and loved.

My mom told me that my grandparents were trying to help the surviving spouse of their neighbor with some of the necessary arrangements.  It prompted my mom to urge my grandmother to seriously think about the kinds of things that she would want and make sure that she made it known to us.  It prompted me to ask the same question of my mother, because as we all know, and as I had been reminded of that week, death can come for any of us at any time.  It even had me thinking about what I would want for myself.

That same night, my mom and I ended up watching Tuck Everlasting, which is about a family that can never die.  It's a movie that came out nine years ago, based on a book that came out over thirty years ago, but I had never read it or seen the movie.  My mom loves this movie for some reason, and while I was not overly impressed with it, there was a quote that stuck with me:  "If there's one thing I've learned about people, it's that many will do anything, anything not to die. And they'll do anything to keep from living their life. Don't be afraid of death, Winnie. Be afraid of the unlived life."

Now, I have never really feared death.  I find it mysterious because I don't know what I believe about what happens afterwards, but I don't really fear it.  I fear pain.  Life may be a gift, but it's also difficult, and I certainly don't want to go through it tragically disfigured or paralyzed from the neck down.  Maybe that's not the popular response, but it's how I feel, and I think a lot of people feel the same.  And I fear loss, because it is its own kind of pain, and sometimes, a more terrible kind.  I fear the heart-wrenching pain of losing my brother, a parent, or a best friend, and the seemingly insurmountable task of waking up the next day and moving on without them.

Sometimes I do wonder about my own death, but more about how I will be remembered.  Another unpopular thing to do, because it is a mark of vanity, I suppose, but still something I believe is relatively common.  I wonder if people that never really cared anything about me would say that they were sad that I died.  I wonder if people who never really knew me would leave trite comments on my facebook wall about how sorry they were that we didn't know each other better.  I wonder if my funeral would be attended by people that had no business being there.

I wonder about these things every once in a while, but the only thing I really fear about my own death follows with the quote from the movie:  I fear that I will die before I have lived.  I look at the life I have now, and while there is so much for which I am grateful, I don't feel like an active participant in it.  I feel like I am rolling along while it is happening to me.  I know that the only person who can change that is me, but as with so many things, it is much easier said than done.

Today is Easter Sunday.  Regardless of your religious beliefs, and despite the fact that it falls uncharacteristically late this year...AND the fact that we live in South Florida, Easter still symbolizes the beginning of spring.  So today I am thinking about renewal and rebirth.  Today I am thinking about ways to jump start my life.  To stop letting it happen to me and to start just living it.  I am thinking about ways that I can find myself telling Kate Norris on January 1st of 2012 that 2011 was, in fact, "the year."

Today I found myself pondering the social hierarchy of ducks.

I think ducks are adorable. 

Not these:

That ugly dude right there is called a muskogee duck.  We have too many of these things in Florida.  They poop all over the sidewalk.  They are not cute.

No, these are the ducks I'm talking about:

These ducks are friggen cute.  There are a few that live by the lake at work.  At first I thought there were only two and I called them Ben and Jerry.  Then I realized that there were three and now I don't have names for them anymore.

I have this strange habit of naming ducks when I meet them in the world.  It's just one of many quirks that I have, but we'll get to those later.

Lately, in an effort to enjoy the weather while it's still enjoyable, I've been spending my lunch breaks reading by the lake.   Today I had trouble paying attention to my book because I kept getting distracted by these damn ducks. 

I watched the three white ducks walking together as a group while the one muskogee duck that also lives by the lake swam around all alone.  When he finally got the nerve to walk up to them, one of them chased the poor bastard away.  A few minutes later, he gave it another try, but the best he could do was follow a few feet behind them while they strutted ahead, stretching their long white necks as if to say, "We are basically swans, we are so pretty, and you are so lucky to be in our presence."  Poor, ugly, red-faced muskogee.  He looked more like a turkey than a duck.  If you could look beyond his face, you'd be able to see that he actually had pretty green feathers, much more interesting than the plain white ones of the other ducks.  But how many people care enough to look that deeply into anyone or anything?  Not many.

The white duck clique followed around by the wannabe muskogee outcast.  High school drama right there at the lake during my lunch break.